Contents

Cover

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Prologue

Part One

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Part Two

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Part Three

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Epilogue

About the Author

A Black Library Publication

Warhammer 40,000

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that He may never truly die.

Yet even in His deathless state, the Emperor continues His eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Special Thanks

To Ead Brown and Greg Smith. And to Alan Bligh who haunts these pages with ideas shared long ago in kinder times.

~ Dramatis Personae ~

Those who are of the Inquisition

Covenant, Daemonhunter of the Ordo Malleus, Disciple of the Thorian Dogma

Vult (deceased), Daemonhunter Lord of the Ordo Malleus, Follower of the Amalathian Principles

Goldoran Talicto, (deceased) Adherent of the Xanthite Methodology

Idris, Daemonhunter of the Ordo Malleus, Pursuer of the Horusian Ideal

Memnon, Witch Hunter of the Ordo Hereticus, Pursuer of the Horusian Ideal

Argento (deceased), Disciple of the Thorian Dogma

Those who Serve

Cleander von Castellan, Rogue trader, inheritor of the von Castellan Dynasty

Viola von Castellan, Seneschal of the von Castellan Dynasty

Josef Khoriv, Drill abbot of the Schola Progenium

Orsino, Judge of the Adeptus Arbites

Severita, Sister Repentia of the Order of the Bloody Rose

Koleg, Specialist

Enna Gyrid, Warrior acolyte, persecutor

Hesh, Black Priest of the Order of Abhorrence

Ninkurra, Venator

Geddon, Auspextra

Cinis, Oblated warrior

Mylasa, Primaris psyker, disciple of the Nepenthe, Bringer of Oblivion

Glavius-4-Rho, Magos

Kynortas, Master-at-arms of the Dionysia

Arabella Ghast, Void mistress of the Dionysia

Iaso, Medicae Primus

Epicles, Astropath

Bal, Castellan Household Lifeward

Gald, Proctor of the Adeptus Arbites

Those who are Other

Xilita, Bishop of the Great Cathedral of the Monastery of the Last Candle

Sul, Archdeacon of the diocese of the Monastery of the Last Candle

Agata, Sister Superior of the Order of the Argent Shroud

Iacto, Abbot of the Sage Order of the Faithful

Claudia, Acolyte of the Sage Order of the Faithful

Loa, Senior shrine guard of the Congregation of the Bearers of the Lamp

Gorda, Senior Shrine Guard of the Congregation of the Bearers of the Lamp

Yahdah, Void-speaker elder

Pious-XVI, Servitor

Kordus Nem, Pilgrim

Acia, Pilgrim

Those who are Anathema

Krade, False prophet

‘But then I sigh and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil;
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stolen out of Holy Writ,
And seem a saint when most I play the devil.’

– attributed to the dramaturge Shakespire (fl. M2)

Prologue

RED PILGRIM

Yolis’ hands shook on the controls as the lander dropped through the clouds.

‘Craft X-T-341, this is Dominicus Prime control,’ the servitor voice crackled over the vox. ‘You will identify and clarify your purpose.’

Yolis blinked. Outside the canopy the storm clouds billowed past, rain sizzling off where the fuselage still held the heat of re-entry.

‘Craft X-T-341, you will comply.’

He did not feel well. A fever ache had been crawling through him ever since he had gone to the hangar…

Why had he gone to the hangar?

He blinked. Why was he airborne?

‘Be at peace, my son,’ said the voice from behind him. For a moment he started. No one should be in the cockpit. Gred and Klaia knew the rules and stayed in the back until they were on the ground unloading. They would never come into the cockpit. Unless there was a problem. Unless…

‘Peace…’ The word hummed in his ear. A hand touched his shoulder. He flinched but then went still. Warmth spread through him. He could still feel the fever ache in his muscles and taste the blood from when his nose had started bleeding – he just did not care now. The same went for the pain in his left hand where his small finger hung by a ribbon of skin. Everything was happening on the other side of a curtain of warmth and comfort and peace.

‘There, my son,’ said the voice. It was rich and melodic, but there was something beyond that melody, something jagged beneath the velvet. ‘All is as it should be. I am sorry that this respite will not be yours forever, but peace is not truth…’

‘Craft X-T-341, this is the final opportunity for your compliance – you will identify and clarify your purpose.’

He reached for the vox control and keyed transmit.

‘This is craft X-T-341, we are…’ His thoughts blurred for a second, and he turned his head to look behind him. The hand on his shoulder gripped his head and forced it forwards. He resisted for a moment, and then relaxed. He licked his lips. They were wet with blood again. ‘We are a bonded transport of the chartist freighter the High Illumination, carrying pilgrims to the Monastery of the Last Candle. We are sanctioned for this purpose under the blessing of High Deacon Cathia.’

The vox fizzed for a moment.

‘How many pilgrims do you carry?’

Yolis blinked slowly, his thoughts turning like heat-warped gears.

‘One,’ he said. ‘Just one.’

The vox static filled a long moment.

‘You may proceed.’

‘Acknowledged,’ said Yolis, and opened his mouth to speak the customary words of closing, but found them stuck behind his teeth. ‘Em…’ Something in him was fighting the words he was trying to say. ‘Emperor’s b…b… blessing to you.’

‘His light shine on you,’ droned the servitor in rote response. ‘Communication terminated.’

Yolis was shaking in his seat. Something was wrong, but he could not think clearly enough to recognise what it was.

The clouds surrounding the lighter vanished, and they were suddenly descending through clear air. Beneath the grey layer of cloud, there lay a bare plateau. The ground was the colour of hearth ash. Patches of early snow dusted the northern faces of low hills, and frost-shattered stones clustered underneath jagged crags. Dry stream beds traced their way across the expanse towards the feet of snow-capped mountains. When the sun-season came, the plateau would shine with threads of melt water. That time, though, lay on the other side of the encroaching Season of Night. It was barely noon and already the daylight was just a sullen glow clinging to the horizon.

The monastery lay on the boundary between the tundra and the mountains. In many ways, it looked like an attempt to build a new mountain at the feet of the old. Spires, domes and enclosed walkways had been piled up and spread out in a haphazard mass. Drift settlements ringed its edges like outgrowths of fungus from an ancient tree. Plumes of smoke and heat breathed into the frigid air above from geothermal stacks, and the faint lights of hundreds of thousands of stained-glass windows winked at Yolis as he banked to begin his landing approach.

‘Set down on the edge of the structure. Do not land on the main platforms,’ said the warm voice from behind Yolis.

He blinked rapidly. Something wrong… He felt pain somewhere and he could remember something… something in tattered red, moving with slow care, a smile on a paper-pale face… red… sharp steel and screaming…

‘Set us down, my son.’ The voice was deep and patient, like a saw blade’s cut finding a notch. He felt warm again, and the memories faded back into the numb place that for now he did not care about.

His hands moved on the controls and he arched the lighter away from the landing pads set amongst the high spires. The lighter lurched as the thrusters cut its speed and set it down on the rocky ground. A hundred metres away a tangle of scrap structures marked the beginning of the edge of the monastery.

‘Open the rear hatch,’ said the voice.

He complied, and felt the hand move from his shoulder.

‘What do I do now?’ he asked. The warmth was fading from his thoughts.

‘Leave here,’ said the voice that was no longer warm, but cold and sharp. Yolis blinked, raising his left hand from the controls. It was red. ‘I…’

‘You shall leave here,’ said the voice, and Yolis felt the command jab into him. He returned his hand to the controls and began to cycle the thrusters for lift-off.

Behind him, he heard the hatch leading to the cargo space open and the hiss as hydraulics pressed the rear ramp down. A gust of wind blew through the lighter, bringing the smell of frost… and something else… something like a sewer, or the sluice drains running under a slaughterhouse. He felt himself gag, but did not turn around. His eyes stayed looking forward, as though a hand were still holding the back of his head. The stone bulk of the monastery rose up and up before his eyes. He wondered if its jagged summits were all statues of saints. That is what the pilgrims on the High Illumination had said – a thousand saints to look down on the faithful in light and in darkness…

The ramp began to hiss shut in the back of the lighter. Yolis wondered why Gred and Klaia had not said anything. Gred in particular would not miss the chance to growl some profanity-mixed thought about how anything other than sitting down was a waste of time. But the thought went nowhere, and Yolis did not turn around to look behind him.

The pilgrim he had brought came into view, walking across the bare ground towards the nearest cluster of drift dwellings. He wore deep red robes, ragged at the edges, and was very tall. His hook was raised, but he paused and looked back at the lighter as he crested a low rise. The face beneath the robe was parchment-pale, and smiling. He blinked once, and then twice more very quickly.

Blink… Blink-blink.

There was something about the face and its expression, as though it did not fit the head underneath properly. The pilgrim raised a hand, though whether in farewell or benediction, Yolis could not tell. He engaged the thrusters, and the lighter lurched from the ground. Beneath him, the man in red turned and resumed his walk towards the monastery.

Yolis banked the lighter around and fed power to the engines. The noon light outside was already fading to a bruised twilight. Beneath him the bare ground sped past. He looked straight ahead. In his skull the warm fog slowly drained away.

Blink…

Why was he here? The thought sparked and caught in his mind. The High Illumination had been scheduled to break orbit and make for the system edge. There were rumours of a storm surge in the immaterium and the captain wanted to run ahead of it. The ship would have already gone. Why was he here?

His hands began to shake on the controls. The pain in his left arm snapped into sharp focus. He cried out. The lighter lurched as he pulled the hand back from the controls.

Blood – he was covered in blood. His severed small finger swung on its thread of skin. There was blood on the controls and on the floor. A thick reek of offal and iron filled his nose as he drew breath to scream.

He remembered now. He remembered the man in the red robes with the pale face that did not fit. He remembered him coming onto the launch decks. He remembered saying that the man should not be there, and the man smiling and leaning forward to whisper something that was an explosion of pain behind Yolis’ eyes…

Beyond the canopy, snow was flicking across the darkening sky. He was breathing hard, tasting acid on his blood-crusted lips…

He remembered Gred saying that they couldn’t make a surface run before the ship broke anchor. He remembered the man in tattered red hiss something in Gred’s ear, and the loader folding to the floor, weeping. He remembered… oh God-Emperor. He remembered Gred and Klaia slumped on the floor of the lighter’s cargo compartment as the ramp sealed and they launched from the ship. He remembered glancing back and seeing the red pilgrim bending over them, smiling…

He screamed, and the scream went on and on, and the reek of blood and gut fluid filled his lungs as he breathed to scream again, and all he could see was the pilgrim’s smile.

The lighter tumbled from the sky. In the last seconds of its descent it seemed to fight to rise. Then it slammed into the frozen foothills of a range of mountains. Yellow fire unfolded into the night, but there was no one there to see it.

Part One

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SAINTS

One

The harvest pilgrims came to the glass tabernacle as they always had. They trod the half-severed stalks down, and sent their prayer smoke into the blue sky, a slowly gathering tide of people old and young, man and woman, all clad in the sacred blue of rain. Thousands of them had already gathered around the tabernacle. They swirled about it, white smoke puffing from their fume pipes, scenting the air with fruit and spice.

‘Credulous fools,’ muttered Ninkurra, as she guided one of her hawks lower over the scene. The creatures were psyber-bonded – their eyes and will hers.

The pilgrim throng was swaying like the crops that had stood where they now walked. Whooping prayers lifted into the air. Inside the tent of glass, the priests were gathering around the altar box. She could see them sway as they sang their secret songs and swung incense smoke around the reliquary. From their point of view, her seeing this would be a blasphemy; she was not of the priesthood, and not initiated into the mysteries of the Emperor’s Eternal Light. The pilgrims who circled the tabernacle would have torn her apart if they had known that she could see a priest open the first leaf of the reliquary. They would have been even more incensed that she could see an acolyte at the back of the group pick his nose. A kilometre away from them, she snorted with laughter.

‘Something diverting?’ asked Memnon.

‘No,’ she said, still watching the priests, ‘not really, just… Don’t you sometimes think humanity is too petty for divinity? If we found the Emperor’s frozen tears someone would give them to a child as a toy.’

‘That is what defines the divine – that it is beyond us.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do.’

Seen from above, the tabernacle itself was a mountain made of triangular sheets of glass, each one tethered to another, the smallest on the outside just a couple of metres tall, the largest over fifty metres in height. Its apex was a blade point thrust at the sun. Even though each sheet of glass was transparent, those stood on the outside could see only a handful of layers inside. Rainbows of blinding light scattered from its faces and edges, hiding the sanctuary at its core. Once the ceremony began, only a few of the pilgrims would be allowed inside. There was no straight way to the centre of the structure, just an ever-weaving path between sheets of reflection. If a pilgrim reached the sanctuary itself, they would be able to turn, and – thanks to the precise setting of each glass pane – see perfectly in every direction.

She opened her true eyes and for a moment felt vertigo as the sight from her hawks clashed with the world in front of her. Then the two split and the hawk’s eye view receded to the back of her mind.

‘I see no indications of the prospect,’ she said.

Memnon reached beneath his robes and withdrew a small box of bone. Ash tattoos marched down his cheeks in rows of tiny dots, each one faded to grey. His patchwork robes fluttered in the warm breeze. He alone was not dressed in pilgrim blue, but in the faded and torn cloth that he always wore. Ninkurra had often thought that he looked more like a beggar or an ascetic monk than an inquisitor. He looked young, at least young in the way that people judged such things, maybe no more than three decades to the eye. Ninkurra saw his lips move in silent prayer before he opened the lid of the box. He took a pinch of dust from within, and cast it into the air. The grey powder caught the breeze. Memnon watched it, face impassive, until it had dissolved into the wind. Ninkurra had no idea what he looked for, but she knew that he saw more than dust vanishing on the wind.

‘It is coming,’ he said at last. ‘Order the gunships to come in.’

Ninkurra obeyed, transmitting the command with a thought.

‘I am reading low-grade atmospheric interference across multiple spectra.’ Geddon’s voice was a scratched patchwork of static and voice samples. The auspextra was sweating profusely under the sun’s glare. Sweat stuck her blue pilgrim’s robe to her hunched body. Bulbous curves of metal gleamed in the gaps between the lank cloth. The heat sinks of her signal and scanning arrays must have been cooking her, reflected Ninkurra. ‘Static and moisture levels are rising. Pressure inversion unfolding at one hundred metres above ground level.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Ninkurra, glancing back.

‘There is a storm coming,’ said Geddon.

Ninkurra snorted. ‘It’s clear blue to beyond the horizon,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Memnon softly, and raised a hand to point up. ‘Look.’

Ninkurra followed the line of his long finger. She squinted against the light, raising a hand to shield her eyes. Then she saw it – a smudge of white in the clear air. A gust of air tugged at her robe, and she was aware of the same wind pulling at her hawks as they turned above the tabernacle.

‘You may wish to bring your birds back,’ said Geddon. ‘All readings are spiking.’

Above the tabernacle the patch of cloud was growing, expanding up and out, darkening. She could hear the voices of pilgrims rising in puzzlement. Through the eyes of her hawks, she saw the black dots of the gunships rise from above the horizon. Even the voices of the priests in the tabernacle were faltering. The outer layers of glass shook in the rising wind.

‘Readings across all parameters are reaching paradox,’ rasped Geddon. The hawks spiralled down out of the darkening sky. Ninkurra could feel it now – metal on her tongue, static shivering on the inside of her skin. The mass of pilgrims were looking up at the thunderhead darkening the air above them. Some were crying out, some were already running.

‘We have targets locked and weapons live,’ said a voice in Ninkurra’s vox-bead.

The gunships were visible now. The sound of engines growled across the distance.

‘Do you have a triangulation?’ asked Memnon, calmly.

‘No, lord,’ shouted Geddon, her fingers clacking the keys of the controls that took the place of her left arm. ‘Phenomenon and paradox traces are changing too rapidly. The prospect is not clear.’

‘Very well,’ said Memnon. ‘Gunships into gyre pattern. Nothing that runs lives.’ He began to walk down the gentle slope towards the tabernacle and the crowd of pilgrims. ‘We will need to identify the prospect directly. There is not much time.’

The hawks on Ninkurra’s shoulders took to the air with shrill cries as she followed him.

Lightning flashed inside the cloud above them. Thunder rolled.

‘Come,’ said Memnon. ‘We must be pilgrims now.’

The Black Priest walked in silence through the Dionysia. Midnight robes billowed in his wake. Vials of holy water and silver aquilae hung from his waist, and a heavy ‘I’ set with a rayed skull hung around his neck. Two void-armoured troopers in pressure helms followed him, their shot-cannons held low but ready. If the priest was disturbed by their presence he did not show it. No muscle twitched under the pattern of tattoos which covered his face, and his hands hung loose beside the pommel of his sword and the butt of his pistol. The guards had let him keep both. It was a sign of trust, but Viola could not help thinking that it, like the threat of the troopers, held little sway on the priest’s mind.

‘They make them from priests who have seen the truth of the warp,’ Josef had said when she had talked of the meeting.

‘Make them?’ she had asked, arching an eyebrow above her chrome-clouded left eye.

‘Don’t get me wrong, they are taught and trained, too – litanies of castigation, rites of exorcism, myth and knowledge that would earn a death penalty across the Imperium – they learn it all. A Black Priest is never a fool and often as clever as they come.’ Josef had smiled. ‘Some of them might be even cleverer than you.’

She had shrugged away the jibe.

‘That’s just education, unusual but not–’

‘Once they get past that they are tested. Every lie and heresy a daemon can utter is thrown at them. They pass through hunger and thirst, pain and torment, and all the while they hear lies, and truths that are worse than lies. Those who get that far are marked with verses of the books of detestation. The tops of their heads are opened and the inside of their skulls etched with sigils of protection. Only then are they sent out to those of the Inquisition that want them.’ Josef had paused and shivered. ‘So, yes, they are made, just like you would make a sword, and you have to treat them as if that’s what they are – things with sharp edges made to do harm.’

The Black Priest stopped a pace from Viola. The door at her back remained closed. She met his gaze. His eyes were pale grey, she noticed.

‘I am Viola von Castellan. I bid you welcome to the Dionysia.’

‘I know who you are,’ said the Black Priest.

‘And I you, but there is a politeness to observing the form of things, don’t you think?’

He moved his head to look at the door behind her and then back.

‘Hesh,’ he said. ‘That is my name.’

Viola fought to keep the frown from her face.

‘My master will see you.’

She blinked her left eye and the door opened. Hesh waited for a second and then stepped through. Viola followed, sealing the door with another blink.

The space beyond was small, barely five paces across, but its stone walls extended up and up until they met a crystal dome that let in the light of the stars outside the ship. Candles burned on iron brackets. Covenant stood opposite the door, clad in the plain grey robe of an adept. Josef waited behind him, the head of his hammer on the floor between his feet, his hands resting on the top of the haft.

‘You are Covenant?’ asked Hesh.

‘Yes.’

Hesh bowed his head.

‘You brought me here because you wish to know something. I submitted because I would know how my lord died.’

‘The circumstances of Lord Vult’s death were presented by my lord inquisitor to a conclave of his peers,’ said Viola, moving to stand behind Covenant.

‘Falsehoods,’ said Hesh.

‘You call my lord a liar?’ asked Viola.

‘All inquisitors are liars,’ said Hesh.

‘For the truth will destroy us all,’ said Covenant. Hesh looked at Covenant. Their gazes locked.

‘True,’ said Hesh.

‘You will address him as lord,’ growled Josef. Covenant gave a small turn of his head and Josef went still and silent.

‘You served Vult for five decades,’ said Covenant, ‘you held his proxy during the purges of Lamish, and turned down the calling to be invested as an inquisitor in your own right, did you not?’

Hesh nodded once. Covenant returned the gesture.

‘He is gone, but I have need of you,’ said Covenant.

‘I was my master’s servant, not yours.’

Covenant’s gaze did not shift, but Viola saw the twitch next to his temple.

‘You are anything I decide you are,’ said Covenant softly.

Hesh’s face was a mask, his pale eyes moving across Covenant’s young features. Then he nodded.

‘How may I serve?’

Covenant looked at him for a long moment.

‘What do you know of Horusians?’ he asked at last.

They were on the edge of the crowd of pilgrims when the lightning struck. Ninkurra felt it before she saw it. White light drowned her mind for an instant. She stumbled and fell. The hawks clinging to her shoulders shrieked. Above her a finger of light uncoiled from the black sky and struck down. Light and shadow reversed. White to black. Black to white. Blue to blood red.

‘Throne’s tears,’ grunted Ninkurra, and pushed herself up from the ground. Lights bubbled in her eyes. The psy-connection to her hawks had vanished. Voices washed through her skull. She could feel the telepathic bow wave break against the psy-engrams trained into her psyche. The crowd of pilgrims lay strewn on the flattened corn stalks, a sea of blue fabric. Memnon had not fallen but even he had stumbled to one knee. In front of them the lightning bolt shone, frozen, a blinding column connecting earth and sky. At its heart a lone figure stood, pinned in place by light.

It had not been one of the priests. It had not even been one of the pilgrims deemed worthy enough to reach the inner sections of the tabernacle. It was just a man, old enough to know that life is neither as cruel nor kind as it seems to the young, young enough to make the pilgrimage on foot from whatever farm compound he lived in. Perhaps he had been having dreams: dreams of great cities of rotting stone and lights that never faded; visions of great battles in times that were already the dust of history. Perhaps he had seen nothing in his sleep but had felt the fire behind his eyes, and wondered at the taste of ashes in his mouth when he woke. Perhaps there had been no signs, and the moment the lightning fell came without any warning. Who he was and how he had come there would never be known, and did not matter, because in that instant the secret power of the universe had reached down and touched him.

Saints, rogue psykers, holy instruments or witches – the difference was not one that Ninkurra had ever tried to understand. Memnon had always said that the difference was only clear after it no longer mattered. She could see why. In moments like the one unfolding in front of her eyes it did not matter whether the power earthing itself in reality was divine or profane. It was just dangerous.

‘Gunships, in now!’ she shouted. ‘Full kill pattern.’

The figure at the core of the lightning twitched, and the field of pilgrims rose as though pulled by strings. Memnon had stood too, but he was no longer her concern. She was not here to protect him. She was here to kill by his will.

The gunships were coming in fast, engines roaring. Ninkurra shrugged the shard-blade from her back as she ran. A man in pilgrim blue blocked her, staggering, blood running from stigmata on his throat. He reached for her. The shard-blade unfolded from its haft as she swung. The pilgrim fell, and there was blood in the air and blood scattering in her wake. She felt her connection to her two hawks return. Their sight filled her mind. She drew her pistol. It armed at her touch.

‘Please…’ The voice came from the mouths of every pilgrim, a deafening whimper of pain. ‘Please… I can’t…’

A gunship banked overhead, engines screaming. Its black hull blocked out the light.

The column of lightning flared. The glass tabernacle exploded. Shards flew out. Bodies fell, torn apart, limbs and flesh split open. Ninkurra dived to the ground. A razor-edged sheet of glass skimmed her left shoulder. Numbness spread down her left side as the nerve shunts in her spine blocked the pain signal. She rolled back to her feet and jinked aside from another fragment.

The explosion froze. Pieces of glass, drops of blood and scraps of skin halted in mid-air, and then began to float upwards as the cries became a deafening pulse of terror.

‘Oh no…’ hissed Ninkurra.

The gunship above her opened up. Hard rounds whipped through the crowd.

The crop stubble was burning. Black smoke smudged the air.

A high, keening cry came from the mouths of the pilgrims.

‘So far…’ moaned the chorus of pain. ‘Can see… so far…’

She ran forwards. A man swung across her path. He was missing half his head; skull and brain sliced clean away, but he was still moving, mouth still shouting.

‘I don’t want…’

She kicked him aside. The gunship curved around in the air above her. Figures in crimson and black armour were dropping from its open hatches. More fire cut into the crowd as the door gunner of the second craft fired. Hot brass casings rattled as they hit the lip of the open door.

A wall of bodies in front of her. She raised her pistol and fired three times. The executioner rounds barely had time to sniff their kill markers before they hit. Wet explosions tore a hole in the pilgrims, and then Ninkurra was through it. She was seeing with three sets of eyes: her own and those of the hawks spinning through the air above. She could see the prospect. He was standing in a circle of burning crop stubble. His hands were spread, palms open, head tilted back. Furnace light poured from his mouth and eyes. A golden nimbus pulsed about his shoulders.

Ninkurra raised her pistol and fired. The round punched into the air and shrank, tumbling in slow motion as it became molten slag. A pilgrim grabbed at her. She took the grasping hands off at the wrist with a flick of the shard-blade, and tried to push forward. It was like trying to run into a gale.

The sounds of gunfire and gunships faded…

The feeling of her muscles dimmed…

She was not moving…

A trio of hard rounds whipped through the crowd behind her. She could see them move through the air, buzzing like heavy insects.

+Daughter…+ said a voice in her skull that spoke and shook like the sound of thunder. +Daughter of man… why is this happening?+

She tried to shut it out, tried to bury her thoughts behind the engrams imbedded in her psyche. But the pressure forcing its way inside her mind was immense, like a tidal wave pouring over a sea wall. She could feel it growing, too, raw power flowing out into being, unstoppable, wild, and filled with pain. There was just a scrap of her own will left, and she held on to it as the firetide of thoughts broke through her. She had faced moments close to this, but they had killed the prospect before its power fully manifested. She was about to see what would have happened if they had failed all those times before.

+I can see so far…+ roared the thunder voice in her skull, +but… I…don’t want to… I don’t understand what…+

Now, she willed.

The psyber-hawks dived from the sky above. Their feathers burned as they fell. Her last instruction held them true, wings tucked, ash spilling from them. They struck the man as they died, claws cutting into flesh for an instant before they became flashes of light.

It was only an instant, a stutter in unfolding time. But it was enough. Ninkurra raised her gun and fired once. The world shrieked, and then there was just the noise of burning corn and the chatter of distant gunfire.

‘The Horusians were the worst of what are called radicals,’ said Hesh. ‘Inquisitors who take the authority of the divine Emperor, and use it to follow their calling down paths that others would consider perversions of the ideals of the Imperium. Heretics, and betrayers of their office.’

‘But they are not called either heretics or betrayers,’ said Viola calmly, ‘they are called radicals.’

‘A kindness of language,’ growled Hesh.

‘A truth,’ said Viola. ‘They are inquisitors. None save the Emperor may gainsay them. If they believe something is right, who is to say that they are wrong? The Emperor cannot commit heresy or betray Himself, so how can those that walk in His name?’

Hesh turned his pale eyes on her. Thin lips peeled back over yellow teeth.

‘To defend heresy is to become worse than those you defend.’

‘Enough,’ said Covenant, and Viola felt the cold authority in the word. He took a step closer to Hesh. The Black Priest did not move. ‘Your master lived his ideals, and died fighting for mankind’s survival. I am giving you the chance to serve mankind, because of him, because he trusted and valued you. But do not think that in this place you are anything but a servant of the Emperor, and your service is your knowledge, your reward is to obey, and if you presume to judge that which is beyond your means then I will judge you in turn.’

Hesh held Covenant’s gaze for a second, and then bowed his head.

‘Your pardon, my lord.’

‘Continue,’ said Covenant.

‘Horusianism was an old belief, as old as the ordos themselves, some say. Its… followers sought a vessel to contain the ascended power of Chaos, and in so doing conquer Chaos. They sought to enslave Chaos to the service of mankind, to make the tormented the master, the enslaved the saviours of the future.’

Hesh paused, his mouth moving as though he was chewing something bitter and sharp.

‘They believed that the warp holds no evil that we do not put into it, that with great will and strength the powers that seek to destroy mankind may save it. They sought a dark messiah to be the avatar of Chaos, a being of Chaos who will bring Chaos to its knees.’

‘You say they were,’ said Viola.

‘Horusianism is a dead ideal. The last who professed its creed was Catullus Ven and he is a millennium in the grave.’

‘Ardena-Venusia?’ asked Covenant.

‘A rumour, never confirmed. Likely a move by the Solar Cabals to discredit her.’

‘You sound very certain,’ said Josef.

Hesh shot him a look.

‘I am. When Lord Vult took the seat of Inquisitorial Representative amongst the High Lords of Terra, he asked me to confirm the extinction of the Horusian ideal. I was thorough. I saw records that even the most exalted of my lord’s peers have not seen, past and ongoing. I burned through one hundred data-sift servitors in the task. Nothing was left to chance. I am certain.’

‘A lot of effort looking for signs of something that is supposed to be dead…’ said Viola.

‘My master was concerned with the stability and unity of the Imperium, and the Holy Ordos that protect mankind, and he did not believe in leaving risks to that stability uninvestigated.’

‘So he got you to check the grave to make sure the corpse of this dead ideology had not sprung back to life?’ asked Viola, arching an eyebrow.

‘Horusianism is not an ideal, it is a poison. You can see the shadow of its passing in the fragmentary records of wars within the ordos. Wars… not skirmishes between individuals of different convictions, but wars lasting centuries, battles fought in shadows and by means too terrible to think of. My master wanted to be certain that those days were gone.’

‘Why?’ asked Covenant.

Hesh looked at him.

‘My lord?’

‘Why did he want to be certain?’ asked Viola, her mind flowing forwards into the space left by Covenant’s question. ‘It was not whim, was it? What made Daemonhunter-Lord Vult think that the dead ideal of Horusianism might not be as dead as it seemed?’

For the first time since entering the chamber, Hesh looked uncomfortable.

‘Nothing… A heretical superstition.’

‘You will tell me,’ said Covenant, his voice low.

Hesh drew and let out a breath.

‘There was a… a prophecy… more an outpouring of insanity, in point of fact. A Black Ship entering the Solar System suffered a containment breach. A high-grade, unstable psyker began to manifest his nature. When he had been subdued he was conscious for several seconds. His words were recorded by the witch-keepers and passed to agents of the Inquisition on Terra.’

‘What did this psyker say?’ asked Viola.

‘I am not permitted to remember it in entirety,’ said Hesh, ‘just phrases from it.’

‘Those fragments?’

‘“Three born of judgement… bearer of cup, bearer of coin, bearer of crown… reborn, renewed, re-blessed…” That is all I am allowed to remember. The motifs in those phrases correspond to some of those found in the works of Catullus Ven, and in the writings of Inquisitor-Master Zaranchek Xanthus. Writings that related to the beliefs of Horusians and…’ Hesh trailed off, teeth closing over his tongue. Viola saw the muscles on his jaw tense.

‘Finish what you were going to say,’ said Covenant.

‘The writings concerned the appearance of a “prospect” for a vessel of Chaos – for the rise of their Dark Messiah.’

The silence lengthened through the seconds.

‘Yet you found no evidence that Horusians were active in the Inquisition?’ asked Covenant.

‘None. It was coincidence, the noise of the warp throwing up the heresies of the past.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Covenant. ‘But if Horusianism was dead then it has found resurrection. Its followers walk amongst the Inquisition again. They killed your master.’

‘Talicto was no Horusian,’ growled Hesh. He was angry, Viola realised. Despite his utter control and stillness he was vibrating with rage.

‘No, Talicto was half a decade dead already when your master and I found him.’

‘Then who?’

‘There are three,’ said Covenant. ‘A triumvirate within our ranks. They wear the faces of friends, but they have been following their path for a long time.’

‘You have proof?’ asked Hesh.

‘You do not need proof,’ said Covenant. ‘You have my word.’

‘Who are these three?’

‘I do not know,’ said Covenant.

Hesh laughed. The cold sound was so sudden and unexpected that Viola flinched.

‘Corpses and phantoms, lord… If you hoped that I could help you chase ghosts then you will find my service a poor thing.’

‘I do not want your help to hunt them,’ said Covenant, his voice steady. ‘I want your help to discover what they are trying to do.’

The man was dying when they reached his side. Ninkurra’s shot had ripped a scoop from the right-hand side of his neck and shoulder. Somehow he was still alive. Blood was pumping from him in time with his gasps. His eyes were open. They were blue, she noticed. He had a beard, black-streaked iron on a square jaw. He looked tough and strong, in the way that the land and open air, and worry of next season’s crop, breeds strength. He did not look like a saint, or a witch, but none of them ever did. The frost was still threading through his pooling blood. He opened his mouth and blood poured over his lower lip, bright red, crusting with ice as it fell. How he was still alive was a miracle, or the end of one at least.

‘Hush,’ said Memnon. He bent down beside the dying man, who extended a wet, red hand. Ninkurra flinched forwards, but Memnon raised a hand without looking up, and she froze. ‘This is peace. Whatever has befallen you before, whatever fears have grown inside you, they are gone now.’ Memnon put three fingers to his own forehead and then pressed them to the man’s forehead gently. The man stilled. ‘This was not your time, but know that this needed to happen. There is a purpose to everything, and you have served yours. Know that and know peace.’

The man’s eyes fluttered. His mouth moved once more, forming words that would never be heard.

Memnon stood, still looking down at the corpse. He pressed his hands to his eyelids and cheeks. Ninkurra heard the whisper of a prayer. His hands left bloody smears on his face when he lowered them.

Around them, smoke was rising from burning stubble. Flames licked soot over the shattered tabernacle. A burst of rotor-cannon fire blasted down from one of the circling gunships.

‘Make sure it’s complete,’ said Memnon, watching as distant figures in blue fell. The troopers were moving inwards from their drop positions. Ninkurra could hear the crack and fizz of lasguns. ‘No survivors.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ she said.

Two

The wind greeted Sister Agata with an ice-cold slap as she stepped into the tower top shrine. Beyond the unglazed windows the sun was bleeding to red as it slipped behind the horizon. Agata paused, feeling the ache of her climb despite the aid of her armour. She was breathing hard, and there was a tremble of fatigue in her muscles. Age was a burden sent to try faith.

‘Thank you for granting me this test that I may grow strong through bearing it,’ she said. The ice wind answered with a fresh gust. She moved to the window. The Monastery of the Last Candle dropped away from her sight, and she studied the plateau. Mountains ringed the land, their snow-covered caps shining pink as they caught the first of the dawn light. Ice greyed the ground beyond the ragged edge of the Pilgrim Drift. The iron torch poles had yet to be lit, but that time was only three days away, when the Festival of Illumination marked the last day of sunlight. Sixty-six days of darkness. Some pilgrims who had never passed through the Season of Night broke down just days into it. Even those deep in the guts of the monastery felt it, even if they rarely saw the sky. Night here was more than the sun not rising. The soul could feel it pass, and craved the return of light.

‘Oh, Lord and Master of Mankind, stand between the fearful and the darkness of their souls.’

The words vanished in another gust of wind. A high, ululating cry pulled her gaze around to the top of a lower tower. A circle of figures in yellow robes were pulling a burning kite into the air on a long string. Each of the figures had a rayed halo of burnished copper, silver or gold attached to their shoulders behind their heads. Their hair was bright orange and pulled out into spikes. Solar cultists, worshippers of the Emperor as the source of all light and truth. The kite they held against the wind was shaped like a sun, circular with a ring of long spikes. As she watched, the fire leapt from the edge of the kite to its heart. The burning sun began to fall, trailing ash and smoke behind it. The solar cultists cried out, joy and sorrow threading on the air.

Agata watched the last burning ashes fall. Her eyes caught the dome of the Great Cathedral, its apex just lower than her own viewpoint, and beyond that the tower shrines of the Order of the Golden Throne and the Bearers of the Lamp. Steam and smoke breathed from the tower tops. Each of them was built around a stack which vented excess heat and gas from the geothermal exchangers buried beneath the monastery. Amongst them, lesser towers and domes formed a tangled mountain range of stone and tarnished metal. Here and there she could just pick out the wheel-topped poles, and the pale figures of penitents and ascetics that sat atop each. Food was pulled up to them in a bucket each day. They would not move during the Season of Night. When the sun rose again after sixty-six days of ice and darkness, most would have gone to the Emperor’s embrace. Agata had been told that in all recorded time, only one person had survived two Seasons of Night, and she had been acknowledged as a saint.

‘Blessed Saint Goneril, watch over them,’ she muttered, ‘intercede that they might know the last of life without suffering.’ She stared at the nearest, a figure in ragged grey slumped on their wheel. She did not know why she prayed for the penitents. They had both chosen to sin and chosen their path to redemption. The sin meant that they deserved no pity, and their choice meant that if they were strong enough they would find what mercy was left to them. But she still spoke the prayer, just as she did whenever she saw them.

She turned away, moved to the stone shrine at the tower’s centre, and drew her sword.

‘By the will of the God-Emperor of Mankind, I stand here, a token of his protection, guardian against the night.’

She knelt, her sword held point down, the pommel resting against her forehead. She deactivated the power pack of her armour, and the dead weight of the battle-plate pulled at her. She had to steady herself and catch her breath before she began the rest of the prayer cycle. The altar she knelt before was a block of black granite. Inlaid silver wire traced the shapes of angels and saints across its sides. A flame rippled at its top, fluttering in the wind. It was a wisp of the volcanic flame that had burned on the ground when the monastery had been founded, now threaded up by pipes to the edge of the sky. Just as that flame had burned for three millennia, a Battle Sister of the Order of the Argent Shroud had climbed the tower’s steps every day for those thousands of years, and offered the same prayer before the flame. Agata was the one hundred and eighty-ninth bearer of that duty, and had made the climb and spoken the prayer five thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four times.

‘As your word is truth, so is my body thy weapon…’

Her hair had been the colour of iron when she first made the climb. Now it was the grey of fire ash. She would die here. She knew that; had known it after she had descended from her first prayer vigil. There would be no battlefield end of fire and blood for her. The battle songs of her sisters would be only memories. The war scars that marked her steps with pain would be her last.

‘As you are merciful, so I am thy wrath…’

She had accepted that end, and had guarded against the resentment that might have tried to take root in her soul. This was a duty as sacred as any. She knew that. She accepted that.

‘As you are light, so I shall bear your flame…’

But a part of her wondered if it would not have been merciful to let her die all those years ago.

‘As your wisdom is eternal, so I shall live for you…’

Perhaps that was why she prayed for the penitents, because deep down, under the duty, she wondered if she had not committed a sin by living when she should have died.

‘As you protect, so shall I bring the absolution of swords…’

‘Praise the daughter of the Emperor! Praise the defender of the holy flame! Praise–’

Sister Agata walked through the prostrate crowd, keeping her eyes ahead. She had learnt in the last few months not to respond to the pleas, or the hands raised so that they might receive the blessing of her touch. When the sign-seekers had first appeared there had been a few waiting for her in the cloister ways after she descended from the tower of the flame. Now there were hundreds, and they responded to words with screams, and contact with weeping. Even so they reached for her as she passed through the granite chamber at the tower’s base. None actually touched her, though, but the hands rose like a wave at her approach and fell back as she passed. It made her uncomfortable.

The sign-seekers were all members of holy orders; pilgrims were not permitted within the cloisters that made up the bulk of the monastery.

There had been signs, they claimed, signs of catastrophe and revelation. Strange auroras had glimmered in the night sky. The numbers of pilgrims arriving had fallen and those that did come brought tales of worlds vanishing and of laughter in the dark as their ships had passed between the stars. There had been visions; dreams drowned in golden light. Portents had been witnessed: a dead eagle had been found in a collapsed wall and had no sooner been touched by light than it took to wing; a fire had sprung from the ground in the desolation beyond the monastery; a woman, who had been amongst the last to make the pilgrim walk from the south, had slipped into a coma and awoken speaking the verses of Sebastian Thor, though she had never heard them and could not read…

Signs, portents, messages to the faithful, or so some believed. Waves of such convictions had swept the pilgrim population before, but now it had found purchase amongst some in the orders. Men and women, who were used to having their miracles mediated by tradition and proclamation, now sought to embrace the revelation that surely was at hand. And some of those had fixated on Agata as the representative of the God-Emperor’s divinity.

She was no stranger to the miraculous or to fervour. She had seen the truth of the Emperor’s divinity in battle and in the deeds of her sisters time and time again, and knew that its power was more terrifying and sublime than could be comprehended. But to her, and the Battle Sisters of the Argent Shroud, the Emperor worked through the deeds of the faithful. Miracles were real, she knew, but more real was the hand of His servant working in His name.

A woman in a grey robe waited for her at the edge of the chamber. Her hood was lowered, and the face beneath was pale and gaunt. Around her neck hung a bronze medallion showing a book and an open hand – the symbol of the Sage Order of the Faithful.

‘Reverend Sister Agata.’ The notary bowed her head and spread her hands in the sign of the aquila. Agata mirrored the sacred gesture.

‘Sister Claudia,’ she said, and met Claudia’s gaze when the woman raised her face.

Cold eyes, she thought, and wondered if the head behind them held true faith, or if it was just a framework for a cold cleverness to grow on. She turned and made for a door into one of the minor walkways, which linked the towers and tall spires of the upper cloisters.

‘Walk,’ she said, not trying to keep the edge from the word.

Claudia followed her through an arch and into a two-hundred-metre-long enclosed bridge whose sides were set with windows of grimy crystal. Agata was pleased to see that the young woman needed to hurry to keep up. She would pay for it later in aching muscles and joints but it was a small pleasure that was worth the price.

‘Abbot Iacto had wondered if your reverence had considered taking the matter he mentioned to Bishop Xil–’ began Claudia.

‘The answer is still no,’ growled Agata, increasing the length of her stride. The servos in her power armour buzzed in the cold air. ‘I will not by act, omission, or even accident help your abbot gain another step on the ascent he craves.’

‘Abbot Iacto wishes only for the unity of the God-Emperor’s servants and for His dominion to be governed by the will of the true,’ said Claudia. She was having to almost run to keep up now.

‘Governance by the will of Abbot Iacto, more truthfully.’

‘You do the holy abbot a grievous–’

‘I may be old, but I am not an idiot,’ snapped Agata.

‘The abbot only wishes that the case be heard for allowing pilgrims within the cloisters during the Season of Night.’

‘It has been and will be again, but I will not give a gilding to your master’s manoeuvring by being the symbol of his influence and piety. The cause is worthy. He should make it himself.’

‘He has done all that he–’

‘He has done nothing that does not serve himself above the will of the Emperor. Others may be blind, but I am not. He wishes to be the Voice of the Concordance, maybe one day the bishop of the Great Cathedral, and then – as there seems no reason to put a limit on his ambitions – exalted bishop of Dominicus Prime. Perhaps cardinal. Perhaps his dreams go even further.’ The clack of Agata’s boots on the stone floor were like pistol shots. Pink was starting to flush Claudia’s cheeks and she was trying to hide the fact that she was breathing hard. ‘And maybe he will so rise, but if he does it will not be with my shoulders as a stepping stone.’

‘You may not be blind,’ snarled Claudia, ‘but your piety is just another name for stupidity, crone.’

Agata stopped and pivoted so quickly that Claudia cannoned into her, stumbled back and for a second looked as though she was going to swing at the Battle Sister.

‘You need to control yourself.’ Agata’s voice was low and cold. ‘You are clever and devious, and I am sure that you are in your own way quietly dangerous. But remember that you are not speaking to merely a servant of the most Holy and High God-Emperor. I am not part of your master’s games. I am not here to take sides in what passes for piety. I am the hand by which the sword falls. I am death, little girl.’ She stepped back, seeing her face reflected in Claudia’s unblinking eyes. ‘Now you go away,’ she said.

Claudia looked like she might say something, but then she bowed her head and turned, and went back the way they had come.

Agata breathed out, turned the opposite way and began her walk again. She would have to add penance for pride to her roll of sins. It had not even given her much pleasure to see the fear bloom briefly in Claudia’s eyes, but that little was worth the price. She allowed herself a small smile.

Something tapped on the stone floor just next to her. She heard it but did not stop. And then another tap, and another, seeming to follow her like the steps of a shadow. She stopped, frowning, and looked behind her. Red splashes dotted the worn flagstones. She froze, raising the pistol she always carried in her hand. The walkway was deserted apart from her, Claudia nowhere to be seen. Slowly she knelt – careful to keep her eyes on the space around – and dipped a gauntleted finger into the nearest splash. She brought it up to her face. The red liquid ran down the silver of her armoured finger.

Blood.

She looked up.

And her gun was rising, finger tightening on the trigger before the shape her eyes saw had even filled her mind. Smoke black, stretched skin, needle teeth and red, dripping tongue. A prayer of protection rose to her lips as her finger tensed. And stopped.

There was nothing there.

Just the painted plaster, threaded with cracks and the faces of saints flaking to nothing. She took a breath and realised that she was shaking inside her armour. She looked at the floor. The blood that had spotted it moments ago was not there. Around her the enclosed bridge was still just as empty as before.

‘There,’ said a voice. ‘Life is tenacious, is it not?’

Kordus Nem felt a hand on his face, and woke. Pain almost pushed him back down into the silence of his screams, but he held on and tried to breath.

There had been… a parade passing through the alley outside the shack. People in red, walking in silence, he had gone to the door to look. He had heard of the red pilgrims. They were just another sect in the many that came and went amongst the tens of thousands living in the drifts. They had appeared a few months ago, but he had never seen them, and he had not known there were so many of them.

One of the hooded figures had turned to look at him as they passed, and that had been the last thing he could remember.

‘Strong,’ said the voice. ‘Strong in spite of all.’ Fingers pulled open one of his eyes. The pain from the swollen mass of his face was like fire. He heard the scream come from his mouth in a bloody gasp. He tried to pull back, but a hand grabbed the back of his head, and held him. The touch was hot. Nem felt warmth spread from it.

He opened his eyes.

A man was crouching in front of him, his face inches from Nem’s. Ragged, red robes hung from him, and a wide hood framed a sallow complexion. The face smiled at him. Above the smile two bright blue eyes stared into Nem’s without blinking.

A priest, thought Nem. There was something wrong though, something that Nem could not tease out of the pain that filled him.

‘You have suffered much, my brother,’ said the man. ‘I am called Krade, and I am here to bring you to the light of truth.’ His voice was soft, so soft… Nem blinked, his eyes swimming with pain.

‘My… family…’

The face looked at him. The blue eyes did not blink. Nem thought he could smell something, something sweet and cloying.

‘Gone, my brother. Gone back to the red meat that we all are.’

Nem heard the words. He felt them, felt them core through him. He could hear a scream, and only part of him knew it was his. He shook. Broken bones rubbed and hammered flesh screamed.

‘It hurts,’ said the man who looked like a priest. ‘And I don’t mean your meat. It hurts in your soul, doesn’t it? That is what the truth feels like, brother.’

Nem heard the words. They were bitter, but soft, so soft, warm dark honey… Somehow they reached him clearly through the numbness. The man in the red robe was still holding Nem’s skull, he realised. Holding it close, like a father looking into the eyes of a new-born child.

You are not a priest, thought Nem, and tried to say the words but they came out as a gurgle. He could smell the sweet scent clearly now. He recognised it but could not place it.

‘You brought them here, didn’t you?’ asked the man. ‘You brought your love and flesh and blood to this refuse heap of lies. You brought them to the foot of holiness, you prayed through the hunger, you scraped and starved, and prayed that you had not made a mistake.’

There was something about the man’s eyes, no, not the eyes, the face. There was something wrong with it. He couldn’t focus though. All he could do was look into the blue eyes.

‘You did make a mistake, my brother. You made a mistake in believing that this world can be kind. There is no kindness that does not have a sharp edge.’

Nem was shaking now, and the man’s words were pouring into him, unlocking doors behind which he had locked the guilt and doubts that had followed him in the stinking decks of the pilgrim ships and in the march north from the Crow Complex to the Monastery of the Last Candle. He had been a dock handler on Nemesis. He had saved and saved his labour tokens for the cost of the pilgrim ship. It had been him that had said that nothing would go wrong, that it was their holy duty, that the Emperor would protect. He had believed… He had believed, and now…

‘There is truth in this world, oh yes, there is truth, my brother. Do you want to know it?’

Nem tried to shake his head. His skull was rattling with pain. Something was wrong. Even through the pain and shock, he knew that something was wrong.

‘Your god is dead. Hope is a lie. Hate is the only truth.’

The man smiled more widely, and Nem saw the staples running up the jaw, saw the blood threading the whites of the eyes, the wet glisten of the ragged red robes. The sweat reek was thick in his nose and throat, and he knew what it was; knew with a cold rush that brought vomit to his tongue.

‘This is holy truth, brother,’ said the priest, and hoisted Nem into the air by his head as though he was a toy. Nem tried to kick his legs, but he just jerked feebly. ‘You know it, you just need to let it become your path.’

And the man in red turned Nem’s face to the side, to the walls and floor of the shack he had called home, to where the smell wound the air like black incense. He saw, and found that he could still scream.

Her cell was dark when Agata entered and closed the door behind her. For a moment she had stood still, the iron-bound wood at her back. She had covered the four kilometres from the enclosed bridge to her sanctum and cell without pausing or letting her thoughts touch what she had seen.

What she thought she had seen. In the Order of the Argent Shroud they knew that visions both sublime and terrible were real, but they also knew that such things could come from the mind itself, pulled up from some dirty corner by fatigue, or guilt, or sin.

In the dark she let out her breath and allowed her head to fall.

She wished that her sisters were there. She wished that she had not been left alone to wither in this place.

She raised her head. She would need to purge and purify her mind and body. She was a Sororitas and, even alone, she was her Order, her will the will of all who shared the Sisterhood.

Moving by memory she lit the first of the candles and set it on the high stone shelf near the door. The room was octagonal, the walls bare granite and the ceiling an image of the Emperor as wisdom, looking down with a face as old and creased as hers. The bare stone slab that was her bed gleamed coldly under the candle light. Pious-XVI sat in his wall niche beside her armour and weapon alcove. The servitor twitched awake as the light touched his eye lenses, and he lurched towards her.

‘Mistress,’ he droned, his voice crackling with static.

He had been a soldier in the Helix 401st; young, pious and brave. A heretek bullet had torn half his head away on Geldic, as he rushed to lift the banner of the Argent Shroud as its bearer died. For his piety the Sororitas had honoured him by granting that he serve a Sister of the Order until his flesh gave out.

Agata held out her arms, deactivated her armour and let Pious-XVI strip the plates from her. She pulled a white tunic over the bodyglove she wore under the battleplate, and began the rituals of cleansing her body and mind for rest.

Calm eluded her as she stretched and breathed. Thoughts crowded back into her head: the burning sun of the solar cultists crumpling as it fell, Claudia’s cold eyes, blood spotting the stone floor in her wake…

You are troubled, she thought. These things are a mirror to your weaknesses. You must be pure. Where there is doubt there must only be faith…

The sound pulled her from the practice. For a second she had heard a low scuffling close by. She looked at Pious-XVI, but the servitor was bent over a plate of her armour, half-machine hands polishing the silver with a black cloth.

She closed her eyes and bent into the ritual stretch again.

Her head snapped up again.

‘Mistress?’ Pious-XVI turned to look at her.

She shook her head.

‘Quiet,’ she said. The sound had been louder.

She slowed her breathing and listened, allowing her senses to fill her awareness as she willed the sound of her breath and blood to silence.

And there it was again, softer but more persistent. It sounded like feathers brushing or beating against something hard. She almost relaxed.

A bird must have come into the chamber. With the Season of Night approaching, the carrion-wings that roosted on the towers and spires were sometimes drawn to the warmth within the buildings.

The sound came again, and she began to move towards it – a tapestry-hung niche that held the stone bowl and water jug for her ablutions.

How had the bird got in and behind the tapestry? The sound fluttered loud for a second, and Agata saw the tapestry twitch. She reached out. Golden-threaded chalices glowed in the faded red fabric. She slid the tapestry aside.

The bird exploded out of the space beyond. Black feathers scattered, as wings beat at her and shrieking cries filled her ears. She felt claws tear at her cheeks. The reek of spoiled meat and burned feathers filled her nose. She raised her hands and battered it away. The creature tumbled to the ground with a shriek. She had an instant to glimpse something ragged and black, clawed and feathered and furred, before it leapt at her again.

There was an echoing bang. The creature burst apart and dropped to the floor. Torn feathers hung in the air. Pious-XVI lowered his left arm. The barrel of the still-smoking shot-cannon folded back into his steel- and-brass forearm.

‘Thank you,’ she breathed.

‘I live to serve,’ he droned.

Agata shook herself and stepped closer to the remains of the creature. Most of it had been reduced to tatters and red slime, but she could make out feathers hanging off the bones of three wings. There was a beak too, and a row of cataract-misted eyes. The smell coming off it was pungent and sweet, like the smell of vomit masked by rose water.

She thought of the Sign Seekers and what she had seen on the bridge after Claudia had fled. She shivered, still staring at the remains.

‘What action do you wish me to take, mistress?’ asked Pious-XVI.

‘Scribe and carry a message to Bishop Xilita – I beg a private audience with her at her earliest convenience.’

‘It shall be so. And the remaining matter of the creature I terminated?’

Agata did not answer for a second. She could not ignore this.

‘Burn it,’ she said.

SAINT’S TEARS

‘We’re coming for you, runt!’ The cry went up amongst the children, and Acia ran. They were older than her, older and faster, but she knew the runs between the shanties better than any of them.

This was her world. She had not been in the Western Pilgrim Drift long, but it had been enough for her to find every small gap between rotting boards and every hole in every rusted roof. She could run from the Sellers’ Way all the way to the first stones of the monastery proper and never touch the ground. She could slide down the forgotten drain sinks and drop into the cold dark of the burial chambers. Most people didn’t even know they were there, but Acia had found them, and that was what made the Western Drift hers.

There were four pilgrim drifts, each of them clinging to the margin of the Monastery of the Last Candle, made and remade from whatever the pilgrims could get hold of. In the long unhonoured past, the orders cloistered in the monastery had welcomed pilgrims, but then Dominicus Prime had become a stepping stone world on the Coreward Pilgrimage. Millions from the trailing sectors came to the monastic world every year on their way to the high and holy world of Ophelia VII. Many went to the great Crow Complex in the planet’s south, but some went north, to the edge of the light where the Monastery of the Last Candle had stood for eight millennia. Penniless, most that had got that far never left. And so the drifts grew, every one a warren of alleys and tiny dwellings, piled up over and next to each other. Reeking and riddled with disease, most that lived in the sight of the monastery died there and never even saw the shrines they had crossed space, and then a world, to see. Some loathed their fate, others drew solace from how close they were to such a holy place. Most simply endured.

Acia swerved around a corner, and vaulted a cart piled with rubble being dragged by two women. Cries followed her, but she ran on. The chase was still not done. Behind her the fastest of the pack ran into the alley. The cart tipped over. One of the women picked up one of the scattered lumps of rockcrete and threw it at the passing tide of children.

‘Runt! We are going to get you!’

Acia laughed, grabbed onto the end of a metal beam sticking out of the alley wall and swung herself up, reached higher, gripped the top of the roof, and jumped. A hand snatched at her ankle, she laughed, turned and spat down into the face of the hunter, then she was up and racing across the rooftop world. The ice wind blasted down at her, but she was faster than it. That was why her grandfather had said she had made it on the march from the south – because she was fast enough to outrun the cold. That was a lie, she knew. She had lived because her parents had given their food to her and made her eat it.

A boy had made it to the rooftops, but he had ripped his hand on the roof edge and was bleeding. Red stains dappled on the grey of his shift. Acia wondered if the cut would kill him, like it had Tola, whose leg had gone black after she had cut it on a stone shard.

‘Runt!’ The cry rose as more followed the bleeding boy over the edge of the roof.

Adults were out in the alleys and on the plank gantries now, shouting at them with curses that grandfather would say were enough to see them denied the Emperor’s blessing. Acia knew why they shouted. A chase was not just a nuisance, it was a waste. A chase broke things that then needed fixing, wasted energy that was needed to make ready for the real cold and dark when the Season of Night came, wasted energy that could not be replaced. But to Acia and the children of the drift, the thrill was worth the shouts and the ache in already aching bellies.

She reached a drop between two roofs and glanced down as she was about to jump.

And stopped.

She stared for a second.

A girl thundered over the roof behind her, reaching for Acia with raw glee on her face.

‘Got you!’

Acia glanced around and shrugged free of the grasp.

‘Look,’ she shouted. The girl reached for her again, so Acia ducked and shouted at the girl, pointing down into the gap between the roofs. ‘Look!’ The older girl glanced as she lunged at Acia. And stopped.

‘What…?’

The crowd of other children were coming up behind them, still intent on their quarry. Acia ignored them and crouched down, ready to swing over the roof edge into the gap. The other girl grabbed her shoulder.

‘You’re not going to–’

‘Just going to look closer.’ Acia twisted and dropped so that she was hanging by her fingers from the edge of the roof. ‘Come on,’ she said, and let go.

She hit the ground. It was a long drop, but she was used to them and rolled as she landed. The space she had dropped into was like a cleft between two buildings, just wide enough for an adult to stand and stretch their arms out. That happened sometimes in the drifts, bits of space were just caught between walls as they were built. Someone once had taken the trouble to pave the ground with lumps of stone. Blown refuse had gathered at the edges. One of the walls had once been decorated with yellow paint in spreading lines, like the rays of the sun. There was an opening at one end that led to an alley. It was so narrow that an adult would only just be able to get through, and unless you knew where it led, completely unnoticeable. And where it led was a shrine, because at the far end, mortared into a low wall, was a stone face.

Perhaps the face had fallen from the walls of the monastery, or perhaps it had been taken by zealous pilgrims, eager to touch a token of the divine. Either way, the truth had been forgotten together with the shrine. Time had weathered its features to soft shadows of eyes, nose and lips. Acia thought of a human face pushed against the other side of a sheet of fabric. Man or woman, saint or angel; its origin was lost under the green mould and lichen which crawled over its cheeks. It looked like nothing. There were thousands of such shrines all over the drift, built from bits of detritus: gaudy saints, flickering prayer lamps and iron branches hung with threads. Even if she had noticed it when she had looked down, Acia would not have paused, let alone halted her flight. But a stray gleam of fading light had caught glow, and she had looked, and she had seen.

The stone face was weeping bright and bloody tears.

‘What–’ began the other girl, who had dropped down into the gap behind Acia.

‘It’s water,’ said Acia, and reached out her right hand to the stone face.

‘Don’t!’ yelped the other girl, but Acia’s fingers had already touched the liquid on the stone cheeks. It was cold and wet, and smelled of iron when she sniffed it. She turned and held her fingers up, frowning. There were other children on the edge of the roofs above, now. A few of them were dropping down into the gap with Acia and the girl.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said the girl. Acia was still looking at the liquid on her fingers. Still frowning, she looked up at the girl. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. It’s a sign, it’s holy, you shouldn’t have touched it.’ And Acia looked back at the stone face and saw that the shining runnels of tears were drying up.

An older boy’s voice called from further back. ‘Emperor’s blessing, it’s a miracle.’

And from the quiet there were now voices rising up to fill the small space, and she could hear the shouts of adults coming across the roof.

‘Crying, it was crying blood…’

‘The girl touched it, she touched it…’

‘’S a blessing…’

Acia shrank back, leaving the older girl standing in front of the stone head.

‘It’s a sign,’ came a voice from amongst the gathering crowd. They were looking at her and the other girl with eyes that reminded her of a hungry dog uncertain whether to bite or whimper.

She could not move. She wanted to move. She wanted to run.

Cold pain lanced up her right arm. She gasped, then looked down and saw that her fist had locked tight. Blood was welling from where her nails had dug into the skin.

‘It’s a sign!’

Then the crowd snapped into focus, and she felt the rise and roar of emotion in those around her, anger and joy reaching for hysteria. The eyes of the nearest were blinking in the low light, flicking between Acia and the older girl.

She ran, ducking past those nearby, and swung up onto the roofs and away, through the growing crowd. She ran and ran, and for a while she thought that someone was running after her, keeping pace behind her as she sprinted through the tangled alleys of the drift. But when she looked back there was no one there, no hint of red amongst the washed-out grey and drab.

People were moving the way she had come, and she heard the words that some called to each other.

‘Emperor’s tears…’

‘The sacred springs weep…’

‘Miracle…’

And on she ran, until she reached the hovel that she called home and found her grandfather, still asleep and shivering next to the dimming fire.

She found an edge of the blanket and pulled herself under its meagre warmth. She closed her eyes, and tried not to think about why she had run, about the way that the water weeping from the stone face had felt when she first touched it, the way, for an instant it had made her think of a single, long scream of pain.

Three

‘Are you certain you want to do this?’ asked Josef.

Covenant did not look up from the candle he was lighting, but the sensor pod mounted on his shoulder twitched up. The pod was a sphere of brass and brushed steel small enough to be held in a hand. A dozen jewel-like lenses refocused on Josef with a murmur of gears. It had been a gift from Glavius-4-Rho. The magos had presented it to Covenant in silence after Serapho, and then gone back to whatever it was that he did with his time. For some reason Josef found the addition unsettling. Like so much else recently.

‘You will remain for the reading,’ said Covenant. The candle wick flared, golden light growing into a narrow blade above the white tallow.

‘If that is your will, lord.’

‘It is.’

‘Is the Black Priest not attending?’

Covenant glanced up, eyes hard and dark.

‘He will not be,’ said Covenant. ‘Astropath Epicles will aid me.’

Josef nodded, and turned away from the sensor pod’s jewelled stare.

The chamber was called an observatory, but the apparatus for observing the stars was long gone, leaving just bolt points on the metal deck. He supposed that Cleander had put it to some other use, a starlit boudoir, perhaps, or a place to privately try to outdrink his melancholy. Now it had been stripped of everything but a circular, stone table set beneath the domed, crystal ceiling. Covenant stood beside the table and closed a box of obsidian that lay in front of him, bracketed by the newly lit candles. Flame-light winked from the polished volcanic glass.

‘There are…’ he coughed, and turned away as he felt the spasm in his chest. ‘There are other ways of gaining knowledge. Mylasa has barely begun her interrogation of Enna. She may know–’

‘Not enough,’ said Covenant. ‘She may find much, or she may find nothing. I cannot allow myself to be blind.’

Josef suppressed another cough.

‘This, though… you have not attempted anything like this since Argento.’

‘You will stay,’ said Covenant, his voice low but carrying an edge. ‘You will observe. You will offer your insight once it is done.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Josef, and lapsed into silence.

The doors opened a second later, black iron inlaid with silver stars hinging wide. Josef felt his skin prickle under his robes an instant before he heard Epicles’ shuffling steps. The astropath came through the doors leaning on the chromed arm of a servitor. He had been tall, Josef thought, maybe even strong, but that height and strength had been withered and folded so that he stood only a little taller than Josef. Wrinkled skin covered the face that sat above the shoulders. Wisps of ash-grey hair hung from his scalp. His eyes were empty, the sockets filled with golden plugs.

‘I was asleep,’ said the old man, his tone clipped and acid-edged.

Old man… thought Josef. He is younger than me, in all likelihood, but then I am old too.

‘You always say that you can’t sleep,’ said Josef, ‘that your gift stole it as well as your sight.’

‘How tiresomely accurate your memory is, Khoriv. Maybe this was the first occasion in all the decades since I gave my sight to the Emperor that sleep returned. Maybe I have been lying all these years, and tuck myself up each night and enjoy a cosy set of improving dreams for eight hours without fail. Or, maybe, I just don’t like being disturbed at what passes for midnight even on a void wreck like this.’

Josef raised an eyebrow, and tried to control his smile.

‘It is good to know that you continue in good health,’ he said.

‘Good health? I am dying, have been since birth. You and this conversation, though, are making the prospect decidedly more appealing.’

‘Are you prepared?’ Covenant’s question seemed like a knife cut. Epicles let out a long breath.

‘I am ready, Lord Covenant. I serve you now as I always have.’ He shivered, and turned from Josef towards Covenant and the stone table. ‘I will not attempt to counsel you against this. I am sure that Khoriv already has said all that could have moved you. He is an old fool, but sometimes those are the best kind.’

‘It must be done.’

‘As you will it, lord.’ He turned his withered face and gold-filled sockets to Khoriv. ‘I tried.’ Then he limped to the table across from Covenant.

‘You have them?’ asked Epicles.

Covenant opened the obsidian box on the table top, and removed a small parcel wrapped in black velvet. It was an inch high and the width of a human hand. Epicles turned his head as though listening to something, and then nodded.

‘They are purified?’

‘They are.’

Epicles turned his head again, and if it was not for the gold plugs in the astropath’s eye sockets, Josef would have sworn that the old man was looking directly at Covenant.

‘You are shriven?’

‘Yes.’

Epicles nodded.

‘Very well.’

‘Seal the doors,’ said Covenant. Josef turned and keyed the door control. The doors closed and locked with a boom of piston bolts driving home. The lights in the chamber went out.

Epicles had placed his hands on the stone table. His servitor had taken a step backwards and become still.

The flames of the candles grew.

The air was taut. Warmth spread over Josef’s skin. He blinked, eyes suddenly watering.

Covenant reached out his left hand and peeled the velvet back from what it hid.

Memnon was the last to join the gathering of three beside the lightless pool. He had other names and titles – inquisitor, pilgrim, proclaimer – but here he was the name that had chosen him when he found his calling. He was the Wanderer, just as those that he came to meet were the High Priest and the Sorceress. That was their place in the order of what would be. He did not hurry his approach, and the two that waited for him did not move to offer him greeting. When he reached the edge of the pool he stopped. The other two looked at him. The Sorceress’ face was a pale shadow behind her veil. She shivered as she turned towards him, and he heard the click of fine gears. Black and red silk hung from her in folds that hid the metal recently grafted to her flesh. Silver coins clinked on her veil’s hem. Beside her the High Priest stood unmoving, hands gripping a hammer that rested head-down on the rough stone floor.

‘It is done,’ stated the Sorceress. ‘You were successful.’

The Wanderer shrugged and turned to look down at the pool. The light of his candle shone back at him from the black mirrored surface. In the near dark, the multi-coloured tatters of his robes looked grey.

‘The Legion of the Arch-traitor had hidden traditions of meeting beside water that reflected the light of the moon.’ A drop of water dripped from the fingers of rock above, sending ripples across the black water as it struck. ‘Or at least that is what the Iates fragments said. They gathered in fours, we in three and with this flame taking the place of their moon. And before that, when mankind was still chained to its cradle, there were said to be those that gathered beneath the earth to bathe in the lost rivers and so forget all that they had done.’

‘Ridiculous,’ said the Sorceress, ‘and irrelevant. Did you succeed?’

‘Irrelevant? You think the truth irrelevant?’

The Sorceress’ veiled head twitched. Gears clicked.

‘Ten thousand years have passed since the great betrayal alone. No truth survives that long.’

‘But it does. I know it. I know it for a certainty. The truth is not a set of facts written down. It takes many forms. It changes its expression, but it endures. Nothing is small, nothing alone in the wheel of time. We should remember that.’

‘The question, brother Wanderer,’ said the High Priest. ‘Our sister’s question still stands.’

‘The prospect on Arda was removed before full manifestation,’ he said. ‘It was a true prospect, stronger than the last, but not yet at the point of incarnation. The prophecy remains unfulfilled.’ He paused, turning away and bending down beside the pool of water. He touched its surface and watched the ripples flow out. He brought his hand to his mouth and touched a drop of liquid to his lips. It tasted of earth and salt tears. ‘The water continues to rise behind the dam.’

‘The final incarnation will not come yet,’ said the Sorceress. ‘It is too soon. Time and fate have not yet aligned. Keep cutting them down and one will come. It must.’

‘There is the other matter,’ said Memnon, looking up at the Sorceress. ‘Covenant. Your agent failed in her task.’

‘He is dangerous,’ she said with a shrug.

‘Aren’t we all?’ he asked. ‘He knows too much. And now he has someone in his grasp who may be able to tell him more. Who was your assassin?’

‘The agent is one of the Renewed,’ said the Sorceress, ‘a kill-girl from Iago. Her shell personae is called Enna Gyrid, but beneath that she is just a gang killer – she knows nothing. What? You think I would send someone who was more than a weapon into the arms of a potential threat?’

Memnon held his face expressionless.

‘And if he uses a telepath to pull her mind open, what will he find?’

‘Nothing,’ said the Sorceress. ‘The Renewed carry only what is given to them after they come from the water.’

‘So you say, sister. Your faith in the Renewed’s ways–’

‘My faith is not open to discussion.’

‘Your faith is strong,’ said Memnon, still looking at the fading ripples on the water. ‘I do not dispute it.’

‘No, you merely think it makes me blind, whereas your faith grants you only insight.’

‘I do not need faith in this,’ he said, and looked up at her veiled face. ‘I know what is true.’

‘Enough,’ said the High Priest. ‘The prospect and the next progression in our endeavour is the matter that we are here to discuss.’ The Sorceress was still for moment and then nodded assent. ‘Where does the next prospect rise, brother?’ the High Priest continued.

‘Let us see,’ said Memnon the Wanderer.

He let his thoughts settle, and then breathed a syllable into the air that sent frost falling from his breath. The Sorceress swayed as the sound echoed and folded into the dark. The box of bone was in his hand. The ash within glittered silver under the light of the lone candle. He kept his eyes on the surface of the water as he poured the dust onto it.

Coldness fell like a hammer. Josef shivered beneath his robes. The candlelight had grown and then frozen. The stars beyond the crystal dome had become hard and bright. Epicles was utterly still, his hands on the stone table top. Frost was forming in the wisps of his hair and growing on his silk-covered shoulders.

‘The spirit moves,’ said Epicles.

Covenant looked down at the stack of cards sitting on the square of black velvet. Each card was a wafer of psychoactive crystal. Eagle wings and serpents beat and coiled across the back of the topmost card, the design moving like slivers of gold leaf floating on water.

‘Divine Master of Mankind,’ said Covenant, his voice loud in the stillness, ‘grace us with revelation.’

He reached out and touched the tarot deck.

Variations of such decks had been used for millennia to foretell the future, interpret the will of the God-Emperor, or for other divinatory purposes. The status of their use was ill-defined at best. Suspicion clustered around them, and fear clung to those who used them openly. They reeked of the warp, of the ineffable, of doorways from the light into dark. But great heroes of the Imperium had used them, and to many they were as holy as they were profane. There were many types and variations: the Wolarii deck, the bone card decks of the three priests of Exorandis, the Calixian tarot, the Solar deck, on and on, in countless variations but common purpose. The tarot cards that sat on the stone table had been crafted on Terra itself by the psych smiths of the Lightless Towers. The crystal cards had been dusted with ash from the Golden Throne, and blessed with the rain water that fell within the Palace itself. They had belonged to Argento, Covenant’s dead master and mentor, and before him to a line of inquisitors that reached back to the Age of Apostasy. They were one of the most sacred things Josef had ever encountered.

He also found them utterly terrifying.

He thought of the meeting with the Black Priest, Hesh.

‘You ask the impossible,’ Hesh had said.

‘Nothing is impossible,’ Covenant had replied. ‘It is merely an act of will. You will help me understand what our enemies intend. You have seen records that we have not, have considered their beliefs and nature. You have the knowledge. Now perform your function.’

Hesh’s eyes had flickered across Covenant’s expressionless face. Then the Black Priest had let out a breath, and began to talk.

‘Horusianism has found many expressions over the millennia. Make no mistake, it is a disease that the Inquisition was born with. There are fragments of reports that talk of Horusian inquisitors experimenting with the material used to create the Adeptus Astartes, of trying to create demigod bodies that would draw and trap the powers of Chaos – like a bottle filled with honey to trap insects. Others attempted to exorcise those possessed by exalted daemons, believing that once banished, the powers of Chaos could hold no sway over a soul.’

‘Vile,’ Covenant had said. Hesh had nodded.

‘But each time Horusianism emerges, the idea takes a different shape, the poison a different taste. If the Horusian ideal has risen again, its delusions could take any form.’

‘But the words of the psyker, the prophecy that sparked Lord Vult’s concern. They were specific,’ Viola had said.

‘Not specific in meaning. They had resonance with the doctrines of Catullus Van.’

‘And those doctrines were?’ Covenant had asked.

‘You are reaching beyond what is known or certain, lord, perhaps beyond what is even wise.’

‘Tell us.’

‘Catullus Van’s belief was that the salvation of mankind lay in a fusion of the Emperor’s power and that of Chaos.’ Hesh’s teeth closed over his tongue briefly, and his tattooed cheeks had twitched. ‘He sought an avatar of the Emperor’s divinity, a saint, that could be infected with shadow. The light and dark would fuse and create…’

‘An abomination,’ Covenant had said.

‘Catullus sought prospects for his dark messiah using divination and prognostication.’ Hesh had shot Covenant a hard look. ‘Much as some who follow the Thorian dogma do.’

Covenant scattered a ring of crystal cards across the table top. Epicles was swaying. A nimbus of light was growing around his head. The taste of bitter iron filled Josef’s mouth. The designs on the backs of the cards were changing. Golden eagles and snakes became leaves, then circles, then stars on a field of black.

Epicles’ head flicked from side to side. His mouth was opening and closing.

‘Well of light, midnight sun, gold, gold and fire and thirst and red…’

A haze of light was rising above the table. The light of the candles was brighter but the shadows pressed closer. Josef could no longer see the walls of the chamber. He looked up. The stars beyond the dome had moved.

‘They are searching for prospects, old friend,’ Covenant had said. ‘The Triumvirate are searching for those that might be vessels of the Emperor’s divinity. Just as we did once.’

‘Hesh did not say that. Viola said the information he gave was suggestive but nothing more.’

‘They are searching for saints.’

‘There is nothing that makes that more than a…’ Josef had trailed off, realising the fact that he had missed. ‘Idris. You believe that is what they are doing because of her.’

Covenant had gone still, but then nodded.

‘What is the first law of war?’

‘Deny your enemy what they want, lord.’

‘They are searching and so we must outrun them.’

‘You know where this path ends, lord.’

‘I know what I must do, old friend.’ And Covenant had placed his hand on Josef’s shoulder and looked at him, his gaze steady. ‘Trust me.’

‘Always, lord,’ Josef had said, bowing his head. ‘Always, and to the last.’

‘Light eternal,’ panted Epicles. There was blood on his lips. ‘Light that reaches through all dark…’

The cards on the table rose into the air, rotating in place, the designs on their backs flowing and changing like the pattern of a turning kaleidoscope. Covenant watched them.

‘Beacon of truth… flame of protection…’

The cards slid through the air, forming a pattern, an echo of a current of truth flowing under the skin of being, a shadow on the wall of existence.

‘By Your will and wisdom,’ said Covenant, ‘let all be revealed.’

And the first card turned over without a hand touching it.

The patterns faded as the ash sank beneath the pool’s surface. Memnon stood slowly.

‘Dominicus Prime…’ he said.

‘You are certain?’ asked the Sorceress.

‘Use your own methods if you trust mine so little,’ he said, voice and face mild, but his eyes hard in the candlelight. ‘But as far as such things can be so, I am certain.’ He closed his eyes briefly, head bowed as though in prayer.

The Sorceress looked at the High Priest.

‘Dominicus Prime…’ she breathed, and her voice clicked with still-healing damage. ‘That cannot be right, not after all this time. We poured resources into it, and lost them all when the child was lost. Prophecy failed, and our attempt to rekindle it died.’

‘This is a new prospect and must be dealt with,’ said the High Priest. ‘Dominicus Prime remains a crucible, a pit from which saints and beasts may rise just as it was before.’

‘I will go,’ said Memnon, raising his head and opening his eyes. ‘For my sins I will see it done, just as I have with all the rest. I still have resources and agents on Dominicus Prime from the previous endeavours.’

‘You do the work of salvation,’ said the High Priest.

‘I do as I must,’ said Memnon and began to walk away from the pool, leaving the other two bereft of the light of the candle in his hand.

‘The Ragged Fool…’ said Josef, looking down at the cards scattered across the stone table top. A layer of psychic rime was melting to mist from its surface. Epicles sat slumped on the floor, breathing in wheezes and shivering. Josef himself was fighting the nausea rolling through his gut and head. The smell of ozone was thick.

‘The Executioner, the Candle inverted… I know little of such things,’ he began, and coughed. The taste of iron lingered in his mouth and he swallowed it, pausing to steady his breath.

‘Speak your feelings,’ said Covenant. He alone in the room seemed unmoved, though his skin was pale and sheened with sweat. The sensor pod on his shoulder was twitching in small arcs. Its lenses switched focus, and then switched again. Josef watched the pod for a second and then looked back to the table. He let emotions form as his eyes moved over the pattern and the images on the crystal cards. They were subtly different from how they had been when he last looked: the High Priest was no longer on his throne but walking away from it, swathed in a black cowl, his hammer abandoned on the steps beneath the throne. The Ragged Fool now bore a bundle of swords over his shoulder, and his shadow was black behind him.

‘It feels… like a threat. As if I am looking at something that is not just a picture of what is, but something that has been designed… no…’ he paused, frowning. ‘Not designed, mutilated.’

‘Aitiokratía…’ muttered Epicles from the floor. He was shivering still, but a little colour was returning to his skin.

‘What–’ began Josef.

‘Aitiokratía – an archaic way of saying that action is determined by something other than itself.’ The astropath gestured weakly with his hand and his servitor helped him to his feet. ‘In the context of this form of divination it means that, by looking, we change what happens, or in some cases–’

‘That what we are seeing has been deliberately altered,’ said Covenant. He looked at Josef. ‘The future is being mutilated. Your intuition is right. This reading was intended to divine the time and place that a prospect for divine incarnation might appear. It is very clear. Too clear. We are not seeing chance here. We are seeing the product of deliberate actions.’

Josef shivered and turned away. ‘Does it tell us what we need?’ he asked.

‘Do you mean was it worth my breaking my vow to myself?’ replied Covenant.

‘Was it?’

‘They are cutting down prospects like a gardener pruning fruit from a tree in the hope of picking one that is sweeter than all the rest,’ said Covenant.

‘I see we have not only returned to divination, but to poetry,’ said Epicles with a snort. ‘But the analogy is not quite right, my lord. A better one might be lightning in a storm cloud. It builds and builds until it can find a root to the ground, and when it does…’ The old astropath clapped his hands once, loudly. ‘What this Triumvirate is doing is denying the lightning its path. So the charge in the cloud builds and builds, and when the final lightning bolt falls…’

‘Except it is not a storm cloud,’ said Josef, his voice cold. ‘It is the power of the warp, and the path of the lightning is power pouring into a living soul.’

‘Just so,’ said Epicles, and all sarcasm had gone from the old astropath’s voice.

Josef looked at Covenant. ‘But is the lightning the power of the God-Emperor, or the fire of Chaos? Salvation or abomination?’

Covenant met his gaze, held it, but did not answer.

Josef looked back to the tarot cards.

‘Where does the next prospect rise?’ asked the preacher. ‘Can we tell?’

‘Yes,’ said Covenant, and nodded at a cluster of cards: the Candle surrounded by red eyes in the night; the Lightning Tower, gargoyles falling from its parapets as the thunderbolt shattered its stones; the Supplicant kneeling in front of an altar in the robes of a penitent pilgrim. Other cards in different positions formed a curving arc around the three. ‘It will happen on Dominicus Prime, in one of the monastery complexes.’

‘The Monastery of the Last Candle, to be precise,’ said Epicles. They both looked at him. Epicles shrugged and waved a hand at the Candle card. ‘Sometimes meanings are hidden and subtle, and sometimes they are as obvious as a fart in a confession box.’

‘Excuse me?’ said Josef.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought we were indulging in poetical flourishes of phrase.’

Josef let out a controlled breath and looked at the card-strewn table. The psy-holo images flickered and flowed.

‘It does not feel…’ said Josef, ‘it does not feel right. There is something missing.’

Covenant reached out, took a card off the top of the un-dealt stack of cards, looked at it and tossed it down on top of the others. The Lord of Swords looked out from the card’s face. A halo of fire surrounded him, and the blade in his hand glowed with frozen lightning.

‘Me,’ said Covenant. ‘I am missing from this sight of the future.’

Four

Agata waited in one of the Great Cathedral’s side chapels, and prayed. After all these decades it was a reflex. Even alone, the training and ways of the Sororitas never left her. Her life was lived between tasks of defined purpose: prayer, training, ritual and war. Any time that did not have a purpose was time for prayer or practice. In the chapel, waiting for the bishop, she had nothing to do, and as swinging her blade through the sixteen sacred cuts would have been disrespectful to its peace, she prayed.

Emperor hear the prayer of thy servant. Emperor lead thy servant on the path of purity. Emperor hear the prayer of thy servant…

It was a silent prayer, simple and meditative in its repetition. She felt its words thread through the shadows clustering at the edge of her thoughts. Above her the stained-glass ceiling of the chapel reflected the candles burning on the small altar.

She heard the main door open behind her, paused to complete the last loop of phrases and turned with her head bowed. The red-and- white-robed attendant who had opened the door moved to the side, his head also bowed. His mouth was sewn shut with silver thread, she saw, and he wore a belt of heavy chains hung with lead weights in the shapes of saints and angels. He bowed lower as Bishop Xilita walked through the door. Her robes were also red and white, but threaded with gold and silver at the edges and a stole of deep crimson draped her shoulders. Shackles ringed her ankles, wrists and neck, plated with gold and platinum, and studded with rubies. Silver and iron chains hung from each shackle, the links etched with words of confession and pardon. The weights attached to each chain were jewel-encrusted globes and exquisite sculptures of martyred saints cast in every metal, mundane and precious alike. Two attendants moved at her side, steadying her swaying steps but not coming close enough to ease her of her burden.

The figure that moved under the load of chains and weights was slight and bent, like a tree curved over by decades of strong wind. As head of the Weighted Order of Penance, Xilita bore the burden of her sins and the sins of all her flock as literal weights. Her ascension to the Bishopric of the Last Candle had necessitated that she show her devotion by bearing even further weight as a sign of her authority and purity within her order, even though it was not officially required by the position. Agata admired the devotion, but was certain that, faith notwithstanding, the weights and chains would drag Xilita down into an early grave.

‘Forgive my interrupting your meditation, sister superior,’ said Xilita as she came to a halt. She raised her head, dragging a mane of weighted chains up her back. It was a young face, made old by responsibility and mortification. Olive skin was drawn taut over sharp bones. Dark brown eyes fixed Agata and focused.

‘I am grateful that your holiness could see me at such short notice.’

‘When the Protector of the Flame asks, the God-Emperor’s servant answers.’

‘You do the exaltedness of your office a disservice.’

‘Nonsense, what you represent is eternal, a fragment of His will and might placed here. I am just a servant, and I will be gone soon enough.’

Agata bowed her head, thinking as she had before that as young as she was, Xilita had an old soul. ‘Your holiness is in good health.’

Xilita laughed, and for a moment seemed the younger woman she was. Then she straightened, biting her lip but showing no other sign of the effort it must have taken, or the pain it cost. The bishop stood only an inch shorter than her.

‘Good enough to bear what I must,’ she said, and then let the weighted chains pull her back into a stoop. ‘For now.’ She patted Agata on the shoulder. ‘What did you wish to discuss?’

‘A spiritual matter.’

Xilita raised an eyebrow, and then smiled.

‘I am a priest, and you a holy daughter of the Emperor, why is it that such a topic is surprising? But then if this age has brought miracles it is to a realm where priests are made money-counters, and the soul a poor coin beside gold.’

‘The blessed Saint Sebastian Thor,’ said Agata.

‘Quite so. Now what troubles you, sister?’

‘Your holiness, I fear either that I may be unclean, or that my mind is failing. But if I am neither, I fear that this place may be in danger of the kind that cannot be imagined.’

‘Brother abbot,’ said Claudia.

Abbot Iacto flicked his eyes to the reflection of his acolyte in the mirror and noted the careful composure of Claudia’s face. She stood just inside the chamber door, seeming the picture of deference. He liked that impression; it made her much more useful. She shifted slightly, no doubt twirling her ring of office around her finger inside the wide sleeves of her robe. She was angry about something. She did a good job of hiding it but he could tell.

He winced as the headache that had been building since he woke stabbed sharply into the space behind his eyes. He had not been sleeping well recently, and for as much opportunity as recent events brought they gave him little rest when awake.

He looked again at Claudia waiting for him to reply. That was a bad sign. She was not normally so courteous. There was news, probably bad news. There rarely seemed to be any other kind these days. It could wait a moment. He looked back to his reflection. A clean-shaven face with bright eyes looked back at him from beneath a neat tonsure. He smoothed the stole over his chest. The purple robes of the Sage Order of the Faithful were thick, and thanks to his position, lined with fur. Rings of office gleamed on his fingers.

‘Chain,’ he said, and held out a hand. Claudia took his chain of office out of its velvet-lined box and put it in his hand. He lowered it over his head, and positioned it on his shoulders. Diamond, agate and emerald gleamed in the aquila’s claws.

‘Faith, surety and purity,’ he said, and smiled. ‘They were careful to leave out poverty.’

‘As you say, brother abbot,’ said Claudia. She kept her eyes on the floor. Her face was so thin that she looked almost starved. As his senior aide, she ate well, but somehow she always looked on the edge of starvation. The close-cropped hair did not help, except in creating an air of lean piety. It was an impression that was often useful.

‘Did she agree?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Claudia. ‘I was unable to secure Sister Agata’s agreement to your proposal.’

Iacto felt his face harden for a second. He looked back at the reflection of the chain of office in the mirror. It, like the private chambers he stood in, was a sign of the heights he had climbed in the last two decades.

‘We will have to find another route to resolve the matter,’ he said.

‘There must be a way,’ snapped Claudia. ‘Everyone has a lever that can be pulled.’

He gave a dry snort of laughter, and turned from the mirror.

‘You do not know much of the most holy Adepta Sororitas. Difficult and dangerous does not even come close. Try to pressure them and it often ends badly. They don’t have attachment to restrain them, you see. They are willing to do things that some might call insane, and others call true devotion.’

‘She said that you are a slave to your ambition.’

‘Well, I am glad that my soul does not rest in the hands of Sister Agata, then,’ he said, and smiled. ‘If the sister superior will not act because of her own conscience, then we will have to find another way to put pressure on the beloved bishop. Do matters continue to worsen?’

Claudia nodded.

‘The reports of unrest are increasing. The beggar orders say that hunger is rife in the drift and the pilgrim holes. They are latching on to every scrap of fear and hope,’ she said. He marked the hard gleam in her eye as she spoke, and reminded himself that, as useful and effective as she was, he would one day have to deal with her before she became a threat. ‘They are cattle searching for hope and finding fear. All it will take is a cause or voice to rally around and there will be blood and fire. There are words of a new sect, penitents whose mark are their red rags.’ She snorted. ‘Even this morning there is word of a red-clad pilgrim who could be cut and not bleed. They are calling it a miracle and the girl a blessed messenger – if their heresy was not enough to earn them their suffering, their credulity should.’

He laughed and shrugged.

‘Is there any use we can make of this girl?’

Claudia shook her head.

‘No, your holiness, it is nothing…’ she paused, and a small smile twitched her lips. ‘But there is something else.’

Ah, he thought, this is what she really came to tell me, and she is so proud that she saved it to the end.

He moved towards the door. Claudia moved in front of him and pulled it open.

‘Tell me as we walk,’ he said.

‘Another ship has broken orbit and made for the system edge,’ she said, her voice low.

Their steps echoed as they moved down the corridor beyond. A freezing wind was pouring down from the open roof of the structure above. Torch flames streamed and guttered in iron brackets.

This was the Walk of the Pious, a road as much as a corridor. Wide enough that two cargo transports could have passed each other without touching, it ran for three kilometres through the monastery’s heart, linking the House of Concordance and the Great Cathedral. Its walls went up and up until they met an open lattice of iron from which the skulls of the blessed dead hung on chains. When the winds were high, you could hear the chains clinking and the clack of bones knocking together. Pilgrims called the sounds the Voices of the Ascended.

‘Which ship?’ he asked. A procession from the Weighted Order of Penance passed them, iron chains rattling across the flagstones behind them. He was careful to bow respectfully.

‘A hauler called the Bounty of Stars,’ said Claudia, in a sharp whisper.

‘Carrying food?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Claudia.

A crowd of penitents in grey robes were approaching from the opposite direction, and he had to nod solemnly as they paused to bow to him.

‘Did it unload its cargo?’

‘No. It broke orbit still fully laden. The representatives of the Chartist Captains are refusing all requests to meet with the deacons.’

Iacto blinked.

‘How much of the grain reserve has been used?’

‘Five-eighths at last measure.’

‘And that was?’

‘Five days ago.’

‘Dominicus Secundus?’

‘The riots are still burning, and the Agri-guilds trebled their prices within an hour of the Bounty of Stars breaking orbit.’

‘They are playing a dangerous game. The Adeptus Terra must be within a hair of stepping in and confiscating their holdings.’

‘Maybe, your holiness, but they haven’t yet.’

Iacto lapsed into silence, smiling and offering the sign of the aquila to the groups of clergy that were growing in number as they drew closer to the House of Concordance.

‘Who else knows?’

‘The deacons, and the high confessors of the Great Cathedrals, and the Administratum adepts, of course. News of it has not got out yet, but it will.’

Iacto smiled and paused to bow and exchange signs of blessing with a cluster of blind scribes being led by a pack of cyber-implanted dogs on gilded chains. The dogs barked. One of them took the chance to spread a pool of urine across the flagstones. Iacto stepped carefully over the steaming puddle as he continued on. He could see the doors of the House of Concordance now, the blaze of the Emperor’s halo spreading across the fifty-foot-high slabs of night wood and iron.

‘Make sure that the news reaches, oh, Abbess Linnis. Just after Archdeacon Sul begins his address. That would be best, don’t you think?’

‘Difficult in the time we have, your holiness.’

‘Difficult, yes, but it will be done. You will find a way.’

‘Your holiness wishes to start riots?’

‘Abbess Linnis. Just after Archdeacon Sul begins his address,’ said Iacto, carefully. ‘Make sure it is done.’

Claudia did not answer, but bowed her head briefly and slipped away. When he glanced back he saw her vanishing through one of the narrow side doors set into the walls. They were called whisper doors, and they linked every part of the monastery sprawl, offering ways for lower orders to pass swiftly without having to pause to give respect to their seniors, or slip past a slow-moving ceremony. Some had called such behaviour impious, but the doors remained and were used simply because devotion could only go so far when running a monastery complex housing over three million souls. The divine Emperor of Mankind could send miracles and visions, but for everything else He needed minds that could understand particle necessity. The words of saints and the might of angels might lead humanity to salvation, but even in that blessed future there would need to be people who understood that crops, and shelter, and authority were necessities. As he stepped beneath the arch of the House of Concordance, Abbot Iacto reflected that he was glad to be such a man.

‘And you have told no one else of this?’ asked Xilita.

Agata shook her head.

‘No one.’

Xilita turned her head to look at where the candles burned on the small altar. Her chains clinked.

‘Do you know what my predecessor said to me when he was dying?’ Xilita shuffled to the altar, lifted a fresh candle from a box beside it, and lit it from one of those that had burned almost to the nub. ‘He said “This is not a monastery – it is the holy Imperium of Man, writ small enough that we can see it. What passes here echoes the greater truth of the God-Emperor’s realm. As above so below. Never forget that.”’

The bishop placed the candle on the altar and bowed her head for a second. The gilded face of the Emperor looked down on her, flanked by saints Goneril and Sebastian Thor. ‘I never really agreed. Not then, not until recent times retaught the lesson. Ships flee from the system. Dark omens and visions of hope come as night gathers to fall. A storm is coming, they say, and all the threads of what we know fray and snap… As above so below, indeed.’

‘Do you believe I am losing my mind?’ asked Agata, after a long moment of quiet.

‘You are not losing your mind, but beyond that I do not know what to believe.’

She turned and motioned to one of her attendants. The man came forward and handed her a brass scroll tube. The bishop raised the jewel lens at one end to her right eye. A beam of light flicked out, and a moment later the cylinder unlocked with a clatter of releasing mechanisms. Agata remained silent and watched as the bishop removed the scroll. She looked at the words scribed across it for a moment, and then handed it to Agata.

‘The astropaths in the Crow Complex have been able to get few messages out, and have been able to receive even fewer. This one came through clear enough that most of it could be transcribed before the receiver fell into a coma.’

Agata read the transcription and interpretation of the message the astropath had heard while he listened to the immaterium. She looked up as she finished, not trying to keep the shock from her face.

‘In the realm of the soul there are no such things as coincidences,’ said Xilita, taking the parchment from Agata and replacing it in its case.

‘The Inquisition is coming here?’ she asked, still shocked. In all her years, she had seen a member of the Holy Ordos only once, and that at a distance. They were the Emperor’s judgement and authority made manifest.

‘To this monastery, in fact,’ said Xilita.

‘Do any of the rest of the clergy or orders know?’

‘Not yet,’ said Xilita, locking the case with a snap. ‘This message was only received in the last few hours, and no one else in the monastery has the sanction for it.’

‘Why is an inquisitor coming here?’ asked Agata.

Xilita let out a long breath before speaking.

‘The Season of Night is about to fall across us. We are on the precipice of famine and, unless I am wrong, bloodshed. Miracles are proclaimed daily. Yours is not the only account of visions and ill omen I have heard. And unto this the left hand of the God-Emperor Himself comes, like the last warrior across a bridge before the floodwater takes it.’ She looked again at the candlelit altar. ‘The reason the Inquisition comes here worries me less than the question that comes just after – why now?’

‘May I humbly submit to my brothers and sisters, bound as we are not just by devotion, indeed by the truth of our common creed, manifold in its many paths, just as His radiance is divided as the light of dawn divides when it strikes the jewel…’

Archdeacon Sul droned on, his voice growling from the speaker-fitted cherubs fluttering above the racked seats that circled the chamber. Iacto kept his face impassive. Many of his brothers and sisters were less caring of decorum. Abbess Granta had rolled her head back and was holding the bridge of her nose as though the pain she was experiencing was only just under her control. Prior Nacem’s head had lolled down onto his chest as soon as the archdeacon had taken the rostrum.

‘…the soul of humanity is the soul of the Imperium, blessed as it is under the gaze of the God-Emperor – praise eternal to His name – and so when we consider all matters that pertain to His realm, be they matters great or small, we talk not just of the physical but of matters both numinous and eternal…’

It was a ruse, of course. Sul was using boredom as a weapon. As the archdeacon droned on and the two hundred and one representatives of the orders listened, the monastery and every soul in it was creeping towards starvation and anarchy. And no one knew what to do. That was the problem with power: the people who could claim it were so rarely those who could wield it effectively. No matter, in crisis there was always opportunity to correct that state of affairs.

‘…and by our deliberations here, in this place, so do we do more than talk…’

Movement caught Iacto’s eye and he saw a senior brother in the hessian robes of the Order of the First Blessing hurry down between the seated representatives. A few others looked, too, but Sul did not falter in his droning delivery.

It’s going to be difficult to ignore in a moment though, you pompous old fool, thought Iacto.

The brother of the First Blessing stopped beside Abbess Linnis, and bent down to whisper something in her ear. He saw her stiffen, her scar-pocked face creasing in concentration, and then anger. She stood.

That was the trouble with pure conviction: it allowed so little space to be anything other than predictable.

‘…the role of the faithful is not simply to believe, though the devotion of those who–’

‘How many weeks are we from starving?’ Abbess Linnis’ voice rose loud and clear. Iacto stared at her, frowning, his face a mirror of the confusion on the other faces around the chamber. Sul looked for a second as though he was going to try and just carry on.

‘How long have you known that the last provision ship just fled the system without unloading?’

Sul looked at Linnis. He was trying to keep himself composed, trying to think. Iacto could almost see the tensions pulling at his face.

‘The blessed abbess is interrupting the correct order of precedence–’

‘How long until there is no food?’

Murmurs rippled through the chamber.

Sul glanced around, rheumy eyes flicking between the hardening stares.

‘How long until famine stalks these halls?’ called Linnis. The old woman was almost shining with anger. ‘And why have you kept its coming from us?’

‘I…’ began Sul, then hesitated. Iacto had to work hard not to grin. ‘The situation is not a matter ready to be discussed in this chamber.’

Uproar. Shouts rose as half the house took to their feet.

Iacto let the sound wash over him as holy men and women shouted at the archdeacon, at each other, for the sake of shouting. The House of Concordance had always been a gathering at odds with its name. There were over five hundred orders, shrine keepers and sects in the Monastery of the Last Candle, all following their own version of the Imperial Creed. Some had existed for millennia, some for years. Nominally, each held its own place under the sacred dominion of the Ecclesiarchy. In practice there was a hierarchy, there was precedence; subtle and not so subtle lines of authority and influence. The ultimate expression of that was the House of Concordance.

Two hundred men and women sat in the chamber, and discussed the secular matters of the monastery. Those two hundred places were a matter of tradition, and in rare cases merit. Iacto’s own order had only held a seat for eight hundred years, and that simply because the Sage Order of the Faithful controlled the second and third most important pilgrim shrines in the complex. That made them wealthy, not in a spiritual sense, but in the same sense that had made gold and jewels and the coins that rattled into offering bowls valuable since the beginning of human history. They had money, and even in these sacred halls, that mattered.

There were three positions that were most important of all in the Monastery: the Bishop of the Great Cathedral, who was the supreme spiritual authority, the archdeacon, who administered all the holdings of the Ecclesiarchy, and the Voice of the Concordance, who spoke for the orders in all matters and was their de-facto leader. There had not been a Voice for two years since the death of the previous incumbent. In that time no one had succeeded in marshalling enough support to take the office. With Bishop Xilita in her dotage, Archdeacon Sul had worked hard to maintain his effective monopoly on authority. Iacto had seen no way to change that. Until now.

The clamour in the chamber was reaching a peak. The guards from the Bearers of the Lamp shifted nervously around the base of the rostra. The ceremonial scythes they bore shifted in their hands. Sul was shouting for order. Voices were joining his, and others shouting back. Static screeched from the circling cherubs.

Iacto stood. Most did not look at him. He waited, then tapped the inside of one of his rings of office.

‘Blessed…’ The amplified word cut through the chamber, as each of the cherubs spoke the word with perfect clarity. Silence fell, and Iacto spoke into that silence. His voice was now unamplified, strong and carrying, but measured.

‘Blessed sisters and brothers, if what Abbess Linnis has said is true then it must have an answer. We must have an answer.’ He looked around the chamber. ‘And we must give the most reverend archdeacon an opportunity to give us that answer.’ He turned to Sul and gave a small bow, then sat down. Sul appeared uncertain how to respond to this intervention, but after a second returned the bow, and then looked around at the expectant sea of faces. He closed his mouth for a second. A gust of chill air from an unsealed door stirred the yellow wisps of his long hair and beard.

You look old, your reverence, thought Iacto. I wonder how old and weak you feel at this moment.

‘My thanks for the wisdom of Abbot Iacto,’ said Sul, at last. ‘As to the matter that Abbess Linnis…’

And with such words you would hand me a crown. Iacto allowed the feeling of a smile to spread across his thoughts, even as his face remained impassive. It did not matter what Sul said now. All that mattered was that he had acknowledged Iacto. The truth was that nothing could prevent a degree of hardship and unrest now. Food was the final currency of life, and anarchy followed in hunger’s wake. But in all anarchy there was possibility, and true strength could only shine in a time of crisis. It had been an age in coming but this was his time now, and from its trials he would rise.

SACRED WATER

Acia woke to the sound of metal scraping on metal. She raised her head from under the blanket, eyes still fogged by sleep, and smudged dreams of weeping faces and pleading voices.

‘Grandfather?’ she asked. The old man was crouched at the other end of the hovel’s narrow space. He had a battered metal can in one hand and was scraping at its inside with a blunt knife. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Water,’ he said, and looked up at her, his smile showing the blackening remains of his teeth. ‘I went out, people are talking about this weeping stone saint…’ He bent back to scrape the inside of the tin. The knife skidded on the hardened filth on the inside of the can, and the blunt tip rammed into the other hand where it was holding the rim. He yelped, wrinkled face squeezing tight with pain.

Acia was across the room in a blink, taking the blunt knife from her grandfather’s fingers and squeezing her hand around his. They were trembling. They trembled more these days. After a second his hand stilled and his eyes opened.

‘Bless you,’ he said and tried to smile, but pain turned it into a wince.

There had been more pain recently, and he had started sleeping more. When he did go out into the drift, it was with a wild intensity that passed as soon as it came. He would try and find food, would talk about finding a way to have her adopted by one of the holy orders in the walls, even about getting on a ship to the stars and going away. Those times passed as quickly as they came, and they were getting fewer. They lived off what Acia managed to steal and find now.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked again.

‘Water,’ he said, and shivered, and then it came out in a rush, as it often did when he was in the grip of whatever dream he was holding on to. ‘There are people talking about this weeping saint, how pure water came out of this old stone saint. People say that one of the girls that found it was pulled up into the clouds, and the other one heard the voices of saints. They are carrying her around in a chair, and she is dipping her hand in the water that people bring her, and they are paying, see. Paying in real coin. People want the water, see, the weeping saint’s tears, and word will be getting to the other drifts and pilgrim holes soon, and they will want sacred water, won’t they…’ His voice trailed off. He looked from Acia to the dirt-caked can. ‘They might pay for sacred water…’ His lip trembled for an instant, and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. ‘They might…’ Then he shook himself and reached for the blunt knife to carry on cleaning the can that in his mind could hold sacred water.

Acia reached and took the can from him, and began to scrape the dirt off the inside.

‘You sleep, grandfather,’ she said. ‘You need your strength.’

He looked like he was going to object and then nodded, and crawled back to the ragged blanket.

‘Not for long,’ he whispered. ‘We have to get to the pilgrim holes before anyone else.’

‘Yes, grandfather,’ said Acia, but the old man was already falling back down into the only peace that he could find.

Five

The drug vial hissed as it dumped its contents into her vein. Viola blinked, feeling her eyes sting and then the warm prickle in her skin. She held the injector for a second, and just let the world be still while it took effect. She felt the dull haze still lingering from sleep drop away. Thoughts began to fire, reaching out and fizzling out when they found nothing to latch on to. She had taken a large enough dose of kalma to drop herself so deeply down into sleep that even her subconscious thought patterns had quieted. Now it was time to wake it all up again.

‘Come on,’ she muttered to herself, and yawned. The weight of sleep still hung on her, soft and smothering. ‘Come on, time and tide and all those things…’

She reached for the next vial sitting in the silk-lined case on her desk. The liquid inside was the green of new leaves. She had dreamed of the forest gardens on Xaris Plethis, of walking under the dappled light when second spring came. Home… so far away and long ago, before the family had lost a fortune and gained another, before the training and the surgery and everything that came after. It had been warm, and the warm wind had brought the smell of cooking and oil fires from the hab-drifts clinging to the estate’s walls. She had dreamed that smell too, she realised. Smell, light, shadow, leaves and trees, all of it as real as the wood of the desk.

Lights were blinking amber on the disabled comms console. As she watched them, they began to turn red.

‘All right,’ she said to the empty reading chamber. ‘All right, enough.’ She snapped the vial into the injector, put it to her neck and pulled the trigger. This drug was a jolt of fire. She winced, ejected the vial, and was snapping the next one into place before the thought of pausing for just a second more could form. The next two vials followed, one after another without pause: cyan and crimson, violet and blue.

She dropped the injector on the desk amongst the neat piles of scrolls, data-slates and stacks of parchment. A tiny bubble of blood clung to the injector head. Viola sat back, feeling her thoughts expand and multiply. Ingrained loops of analysis spun up and she felt herself begin to hunger. By the time she activated the data-stream linked to her augmetic left eye, the lack of information to process was causing her physical pain. It took her two minutes to read the status of the ship, from command status to weapon readiness. Then she began on the material on her desk, logs and reports, numbers, profit and loss, all of it a cascade that she drank, her eyes not blinking, her face a pale mask beneath her snow-white hair. At last she stopped, and felt the information breathe behind her eyes.

It was getting harder to escape. Part of that was time – after a while the pathways etched into her psyche by the family savants became deeper, the drug infusions a daily need, data no longer an addiction but a necessity as basic as air. That was part of it. The other part of it was that she was starting to worry what would happen when she wasn’t looking, what in the web of all that she controlled for her family and for Covenant would go wrong if she let herself close her eyes. Still, at least she had been able to sleep, if only for a few hours.

The door alert clanged. She looked up, realising that apart from the light of the candle hovering above her desk on a servo-skull, the librarium was unlit.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Bal, Lady Viola, from the household contingent. Master Kynortas ordered me to escort you on your tour of the lower decks.’

Viola frowned, and blink-accessed a series of records. She was still frowning as she stood and shrugged on a red and black naval-cut coat. The laspistol was in the pocket where she had left it, and the grip slid into her palm like the hand of an old friend.

‘Enter,’ she said, and keyed the door release.

Wooden panelling slid aside to reveal slab plasteel, which split and hinged outwards with a hiss of pistons.

Viola watched and waited, hands thrust casually into the pockets of her coat.

A man stepped through the opening. He was tall, six feet four at a glance. He wore the red and black of a Castellan-bonded trooper, and the burnished steel cuirass of a member of the household guard. His face was lean, the dark hair above dusted with grey. He wore a short sabre on his left hip, a heavy boarding pistol on his right and carried a brush-crested pressure helm, lacquered black, under his left arm. He moved awkwardly, she noticed, as though slightly off-balance, or carrying an injury.

‘My lady,’ he said, stopping and bowing his head.

‘I don’t know you,’ she said.

‘Master Kynortas is personally unavailable–’

‘I know.’

‘I was ordered to attend you as your lifeward–’

‘Where is Melgor?’ In her pocket, her finger was steady on the laspistol’s trigger. One swift movement and she could tear his head from his shoulders with a shot.

‘She is also unable to attend you.’

‘There is no mention of that in the household contingent reports.’

‘No, lady, but it is so.’

‘That is not possible.’ She saw the ghost of a frown form on his face.

‘I regret that I cannot explain what is possible, only that Melgor is unable to attend, and I have been ordered to attend–’

‘How?’ she snapped, feeling anger flare, and then wondering at its intensity. The drugs and cognitive rhythms had not kicked in properly. She was still not balanced.

Bal looked up at her. His eyes were blue.

‘Because she is bleeding out in a medicae bay twenty decks down from here.’

Viola blinked.

‘That has not been… I was not…’

‘Live fire drill accident,’ said Bal. ‘It happens. I am sure the report will come along.’

Viola blinked again; shook her head.

‘But…’ She looked up at him, then felt the sway of her still-settling mind steady. ‘I don’t know you.’ Her voice was cold. Her finger tensed on the pistol’s trigger.

‘And nor I you, my lady, but if you really mean to shoot me with that pistol in your pocket you should take a step back.’

She froze. Then drew the pistol and aimed it at his head.

‘And now?’

‘I think you could kill me just fine.’

‘I don’t know you,’ she said again. Part of herself was wondering why she was pointing a gun at a man who might be a bodyguard or an assassin. If he was a killer she should have already shot him. If he was not, then she was looking more foolish by the second. Another part of her, the part that even all those years of mind sculpting and training had not been able to remove, did not care. This was her library. She was the seneschal of House von Castellan, and she would point a gun at whomever she pleased. ‘Who are you?’

Bal looked straight down the gunsight, and sighed.

‘You know what, to hell with this,’ he said, and dumped the lacquered helmet onto the desk. ‘I said it was a bad idea.’

‘What do you think you–’

‘I said this duty was not for me. I said.’ He looked up at her as he unfastened the cuirass and shook it free. Under the armour plate he wore a quilted bodyglove in red and black. ‘I am sorry, this is a mistake. Go ahead and take the shot – frankly it would make me feel better.’

The armour went on the desk beside the helm. A stack of data-slates wobbled. Viola took a step. The frown on her face was a scowl.

‘What are you doing? You can’t just–’

‘Renege on a contract? Actually, I think I can, and even if I can’t the only way of enforcing it is to shoot me, and that at least is better than traipsing around like a tin soldier trying to remember whether to bow or salute.’

‘Is this a joke?’ snapped Viola, surprise flicking to anger.

A cord of gold braid and household crest in silver went onto the desk next.

‘Joke? Yes, but not a good one.’ He turned and walked towards where the door hid behind an expanse of wooden panelling. Shorn of his armour and formal weaponry he moved with a smooth grace, she noticed, like a feline apex predator. He stopped in front of the wall.

‘Could you let me out?’ He paused, and then bowed his head stiffly. ‘If it is not too much trouble, my lady.’

Viola laughed. The sound rose up the book-lined walls. Now it was Bal’s turn to frown.

‘Where did Kynortas find you?’ she asked.

‘Serapho,’ he said. ‘One month back after you put into dock there.’

‘The hive-archives?’

‘It’s not all scribes and ink drinkers.’

‘I know,’ she said. In her left eye details of the planet society were flashing across her sight faster than she could have blinked. She was reading the ship records through.

‘You were what? A thief-seeker?’ Bal turned away, looking at the panelling as though he would be able to find a handle or hatch he had missed before. ‘And Kynortas found you how?’

Bal gave a single shake of his head. ‘He found me, offered me a contract, and I said yes… not my smartest move.’

‘Why not? Kynortas is a long way from a fool, and he doesn’t let just anyone walk in here wearing a household crest.’

‘Like you said before – you don’t know me. This isn’t for me. A mistake.’

Viola blinked as a strip of data whipped past her sight.

‘Bal, formally Balan Zur, gun-servant to the late scribeseeker-general of the prime archipelago. Imprisoned after the death of his mistress during a turf war in the lower archive stacks. Sentenced to…’ She paused, the data frozen in her eye. ‘Sentenced to menial servitor conversion for his failure.’

Bal went very still, and then he nodded once.

‘May I go now, please?’

‘Kynortas must have used Lord Covenant’s authority to have you released to him…’

Bal let out a breath.

‘May I go, please?’

Viola looked at him for a long moment, and then moved back to her desk and activated the door release. The wood and metal slid and folded back.

‘Thank you,’ said Bal, and stepped through the door.

‘Why did I need to take a step back?’ she asked. Bal looked back at her. ‘You said that I had to take a step back if I really meant to shoot you – why?’

Bal looked at her for a moment and shrugged.

‘You had to draw the weapon. I was three strides from you. A guess, but you were taught to extend your arms to shoot. That makes it two strides, and I am under or behind your gun’s barrel.’ He shrugged again. ‘By the time the shot went off I would have been throwing you to the floor. One step back and you would have had time to draw, aim and squeeze, and I would have been a dead man.’

‘And if you had the pistol?’

Bal shrugged.

‘Honestly it wouldn’t matter how far away you were. You would be dead.’ He looked confused for a second and then bowed his head. ‘I mean… of course, you would not… my lady…’

She laughed again and threw him the laspistol. He looked up and caught it casually. Hand sliding around the grip and covering, not touching, the trigger, she noticed. Professional.

‘Show me,’ she said.

‘What, show you how dead you would be? No!’

She shook her head, the laughter lingering as a grin.

‘The soul of your craft is guns – I would like to see some of it, before you go.’ She paused, still smiling. ‘Please.’

‘All right.’ He fished in a thigh pocket and came up with a handful of coins, some tarnished silver, some faded bronze. Viola recognised them as script tokens, silver verses and bronze cant; the currency of Serapho. He looked at her and flicked a single coin into the air. There was a crack of las-fire, a flash of light. Charred metallic dust fell through the air.

‘Impressive,’ said Viola, and nodded at the other coins in his hand. ‘What about the rest?’

‘All of them?’

Viola shrugged.

‘Why not?’

Bal raised an eyebrow. Then he grinned.

‘Useless now anyway,’ he said, and threw the fistful of coins into the air.

Cleander von Castellan made sure that he smiled as he stepped onto the command dais. He felt like doing anything but smiling. Truth be told, he felt like drinking a lot of whatever spirit he could lay his hands on and then throwing up.

‘Did I miss it?’ he asked, and grinned. The nearby deck officers grinned back.

‘No, sir,’ said Void Mistress Ghast, handing over an order docket to one of a cluster of subalterns, saluting, and turning back to the next junior waiting on her. ‘You made it just in time.’

‘I must try harder to be less punctual in the future,’ he said. More grins. He took a silver cup of caffeine from a waiting servitor and took a swig. It was all so damned predictable – the tricks, the little jokes helping mask the truth – that everyone on the Dionysia’s bridge was on edge. Four weeks in the warp, four bad weeks. The storms had been blowing hard after they had left Serapho, and Covenant’s meeting with the Black Priest, Hesh. There had been problems in the lower decks: discontent, madness and ratings trying to dig their way out of the bilge hulls. Cleander couldn’t say he blamed them. He had not slept properly in seventeen nights, and the night before had been filled with dreams that woke him shivering and sweat-soaked, a scream caught just between his tongue and teeth.

Now they were just reaching the point of translation back into reality. Anyone who had seen fewer storms than he might have thought a return to the void should have been a cause of celebration. It was not, though. It was one of the most dangerous parts of a storm passage, when the unreality of the warp gave up a ship to reality, and the two dimensions ground against each other like teeth. And with a storm running it was worse. They had been threading the worst storms that Cleander had ever seen. So he made sure that he kept his smile in place as he sipped the hot caffeine.

‘Approaching calculated point of transition at edge of Dominicus System,’ said a servitor-modulated voice. The Navigators never spoke directly when threading the warp. ‘Count mark sixty minutes, six-zero minutes.’

‘Mark the count!’ called Ghast from beside Cleander.

‘Mark the count!’

‘Mark the count!’ The shouts echoed down the bridge.

Bells clanged. Tech-adepts began to walk between the consoles. Censers puffed incense into the air. Light dimmed to amber. Seconds and minutes began to blink across screens hanging from the spine of the room.

‘Very good, Mistress Ghast,’ he said, putting the cup of caffeine down on the servitor’s waiting tray. He felt like he was going to throw it back up. A shiver ran through the ship. Cleander thought for a moment that it sounded like something outside running its claws over the hull. ‘I hope that wasn’t anyone knocking to come in – we simply don’t have the room for guests.’ A few of the officers managed to grin, but none of them laughed. Cleander made sure that he kept smiling.

‘Lord Covenant,’ said Glavius-4-Rho, as he entered Covenant’s chambers. He hinged his body into a bow. He had calculated the degree of his obeisance based on reactions to his previous formal greetings and some remarks by the preacher called Josef, and the Lady Viola. He had spent the better part of an hour on the calculations for his posture and the length of time it should be held. Now that he stood before the inquisitor, bent over, primary arms thrown wide in submission, watching the seconds tick down, he was certain he had made a miscalculation.

‘Did you succeed?’ asked Covenant.

Glavius-4-Rho did not move for a second. He had another 3.12 seconds until his calculations said he could rise from his formal bow. He cancelled the time count and straightened. His augmetics purred. His eye-rings clicked. He was unsettled, yes, that was what he was feeling: unsettled. Perhaps it was their imminent exit from the warp. His calculations and preparations should have removed that source of emotional intrusion into his thought space, but–

‘Magos?’

Glavius-4-Rho’s sight snap-focused on Covenant. The inquisitor had not risen from his desk, but sat with his hands resting on the arms of his chair. A mind-linked sculpting apparatus spun around the half-complete sculpture of a face. Glavius-4-Rho noticed that the movements had a fast jerky rhythm, like that of fingers drumming in time with unsettled thoughts.

‘Magos, is there a problem?’

Covenant was utterly still, his eyes steady.

Wrapped in metal and wire, the last of Glavius-4-Rho’s flesh shivered.

‘The undertaking was a success. The device that you placed in my keeping is now functional.’

‘Good.’

‘I am not familiar with this pattern of sacred technology…’ He paused. ‘I am not even sure if it is sacred.’

Covenant turned and looked across to where the silver faces of enemies and the gold faces of allies looked down from the wood-panelled wall.

‘You have it?’

Glavius-4-Rho nodded, and reached inside his robes with his secondary arms. The box that he withdrew was small, 8.3 by 14.168, by 5.15 centimetres, made of a grey, petrified wood that he had not been able to identify. The ratios of its dimensions were slightly off and that had vexed him ever since Covenant had handed it to him. Not as much as the contents had for these last weeks, but still…

He placed the box on the desk. Covenant steepled his hands and looked at it. Glavius-4-Rho paused for 0.89 seconds, and then hinged the lid open.

‘It functions as intended,’ he said, ‘or at least so I believe. It is difficult to be certain without having seen it function before. The damage was extensive. Heat and…’ His voice trailed off in static.

‘Do you know what it is?’ asked Covenant.

‘I deduced enough of its purpose to assign it a form of designation. Based on that and the data from Serapho I can ascribe it a functional title.’ He paused again, and felt a mechanism in his cheek twitch. ‘It is a predictive etheric resonance sensor.’

Covenant lifted the device out of the box. In form it was a disc of brass and bone, 15.33 recurring centimetres in diameter. At its core, a silver flywheel holding three crystal spheres spun in a bubble of the same material. Symbols that resembled ancient Terran astrological signs covered the disc, etched in hair-fine lines. Subtle cogwork murmured inside its case as Covenant lifted it.

‘You are right,’ said Covenant softly, staring at the device. ‘At least you are not wrong. This… thing responds to tides in the warp, to patterns of energy, to the merging of dreams and thoughts. It was made on Terra, did you know that?’

Glavius-4-Rho parsed the question, uncertain if it was rhetorical, or a sincere request for information. He was not comfortable. This behaviour was outside of the patterns of behaviour he had observed in the inquisitor. He was not certain why Covenant was talking to him. He had absolutely no idea how he should respond.

‘I was not aware of its place of manufacture,’ he said.

‘A sect of techno-mystics made it over four millennia ago, during the tyranny of Goge Vandire. The design came to them in dreams. Half the sect spent their lives asleep, waking only to babble what they had seen. The other half laboured to turn those dreams into machines. They created many things, and most did not work, but this…’ he held the crystal and brass device up between his fingers. ‘This worked. As soon as they made it all of the waking members of the sect killed each other to control it. The sleepers never woke. They died while dreaming, never waking… It is an etheric auspectrum, but might also be called a wyrd-scope, and it was used to predict the occurrence of miracles.’

Glavius-4-Rho was silent for a second, hoping and waiting to be dismissed. No such release came. He would have to respond – that was the normal pattern of interaction.

‘How did it come into your possession, lord?’

Covenant looked up at him sharply, and Glavius-4-Rho realised that he must have crossed some form of boundary in this interaction. Then the inquisitor sat back, and the cast of his face changed.

‘My master… it was my master’s. It is one of the means he used to divine the presence of beings touched by the Emperor’s majesty.’

‘He gave it to you?’

Covenant nodded, then looked up. Glavius-4-Rho almost stepped back.

‘No, I took it after he died.’

Covenant turned away, and for a moment Glavius-4-Rho almost did not recognise the man who was his lord. He looked older, but somehow younger too, alone, with the weight of the past pulling shadows into the recesses of his face. Glavius-4-Rho felt a fact rise in his mind that he was not sure where it had come from.

‘You… miss… you regret his absence from life…’

Covenant put the wyrd-scope back into its box, and shut the lid with a snap.

‘Thank you, magos,’ he said. His face was hard control again. ‘You have done good work. You may go.’

Glavius-4-Rho hesitated and then bowed and scuttled out of the room.

‘You have never been on a starship before, have you?’ Viola said as they squeezed down a companionway.

‘Once,’ said Bal, ahead of her. He had covered his red and black body glove with a cloak of worn fabric the colour of rust. Under that he wore two laspistols in high holsters and several pouches of ammunition. For her part, Viola wore a black overall and a dark cloak with a deep hood to cover her ivory hair. She sometimes said that the colour was a family trait, recessive in the female line. That was a lie though. The drug and intellect conditioning had bleached it white when she was not even thirteen and it had stayed that way ever since. She was proud of it now, but when going down to the Dionysia’s deep decks she kept it hidden.

‘When was that?’ she asked.

‘When I was too young to remember it,’ said Bal, glancing up at where a viscous liquid dripped from the pipes above. The companionway was narrow, and made more so by the pipes and cable bundles that lined its walls and ceiling. A thick layer of dust and oil sat on everything, fused and set like stone. There was no light, so they both carried small candles in glass bubbles held on wire handles. ‘People don’t have stab lights or power packs down here,’ Viola had explained when Bal had raised an eyebrow as she had given him his lamp.

‘Void life is different,’ she said.

‘Yes and no. It’s not so different from parts of the archive stacks. Down in the deep there are places that never see the light, and where you have to crawl through tunnels dug into parchment layers. There’re things and people down there that think that light only comes from fire. Seeing a star – let alone being on a lump of metal going between them – would terrify them.’

‘Not you though?’

He snorted, and she saw his teeth flash in a grin.

‘Oh, I am terrified all right. I am just working hard to not let it show.’ He stopped, and held up the glass-lamp. ‘Sealed hatch. No sign of a release handle.’

‘Let me,’ said Viola, and squeezed past him, and pressed a ring on her right index finger to the pitted metal. There was a low thump, and a crack opened around the edge of the hatch. ‘After you.’

He moved past, pushing the hatch open. She noticed that his left hand had slid one of his pistols from its holster as he paused, a frown forming before he shook his head.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Why do you come down here? If it is as dangerous as you say, why come down here and skulk about in the shadows with only a gun-servant like me as backup?’

She moved past him, blinking her eye to low-light vision. A short, wide passage led to a larger hatch that hung open. Corrosion crawled over the deck and walls. The air smelled of stagnant water and rust. Light came from beyond the door, flickering and red.

‘Why come down to the bilge levels? Because you were more right than you know. This ship is like a city, and I am its chief administrator, paymaster and prosecutor. You think it’s all vast fortunes, cargos of treasure and a side-line in working for the Inquisition?’

‘Isn’t it?’ he said with a fresh grin.

‘Yes, I suppose a lot of it is, but a rogue trader is their ship. And down here, where I am just a rumour and the void is the promise of death… problems can start down here that, if they aren’t dealt with, can leave the ship dead in the void. And if that happens, all the gold in the heavens can’t buy your way back to life.’

She moved closer to the open hatch door. Another tap of a ring on her left hand, and the compact stummer embedded in it activated. A bubble of hissing silence swallowed the sounds of their steps. She looked through the gap in the hatch, making sure that she kept back out of the light.

Five figures stood in the compartment space beyond. Each of them was pale, and long limbed. Three wore the tattered remains of rating uniforms. The other two – a younger man and an old woman – wore amalgams of vacuum suits, festooned with pieces of rusting metal hung on loops of wire. The old woman held a staff hung with wires and power packs, and tipped with a cracked glow tube. The ratings held drive-guns – crude projectile weapons made from rivet drivers.

‘Does it speak?’ said one of the ratings. ‘Does the iron-mother speak?’

The old woman with the staff shifted. Metal clinked.

‘The iron-mother speaks,’ said the woman, her voice creaking like rope in a wind. ‘I hear it. I heard it. It speaks. It says that we are bound for night. I hear it speak! And it says we must…’

‘A cult…’ hissed Bal from next to Viola.

‘Barely. They are called void-speakers. They listen to… sounds in the hull. They think they hear the voice of the ship, of the iron-mother. It’s an old void superstition. Not just on this ship either. Some captains try to get rid of them, and after a while they are just there again, different people telling the same story.’

‘You let them do this?’

‘Let them? I do all I can to protect them.’

‘Why would someone like you–’

‘There are many things that happen out of sight on a ship that leave a lot of people dead if you ignore them. The void-speakers hear and know things. Plus, if you deal with them properly they are not so bad.’

‘So this is it, this is how you do it.’ He gave a whispered laugh.

‘Do what?’ she asked.

‘You hear and know everything. You’re the lady of threads…’ said Bal, then grinned apologetically. ‘That is what the household troops called you.’

‘Because I am like a spider, yes, I know.’ She moved to the door. ‘And you should know something else if you are going to guard my life. The name sticks because that is exactly what I am like.’

She smiled at him and stepped through the opening.

The five void-speakers did not see or hear her until she deactivated the stummer. By then she was five paces from them. They spun at the sound of her next step, and then their eyes went wide and they folded to the deck. Viola bent down and tugged the void-speaker with the staff up to her feet. The woman was feather light, and her eyes were filming with cataracts. The others stood more slowly, careful to keep their heads bowed and not to meet Viola’s gaze.

‘Honoured elder, Yahdah,’ said Viola to the woman.

‘Mistress, you return to us…’ The woman with the staff’s head twitched, and she pointed a long finger to where Bal had followed her. ‘This one is unknown to the voice.’

‘He is bound to my life,’ said Viola.

‘For coin? There is no truth in coin…’

‘He is bound to me and so to the iron-mother.’

The elder held her milky gaze on Bal for a long moment, blinking slowly. Then she bowed her head.

‘He is welcome amongst us.’

Viola nodded, relieved.

‘What does the iron-mother say?’ asked Viola.

‘It speaks of storms and broken dreams,’ said the elder, and motioned to the deck. ‘Come, sit and let me speak its voice to you.’

A blast of thruster wash buffeted Josef as he walked between the black-bodied gunships. The livery of the Adeptus Arbites had been painted out, and midnight black now shrouded them from nose to tail. The only mark on each of them was a small image of a winged fist set at the heart of the tri-barred ‘I’ of the Inquisition, stencilled in white beneath the cockpit canopies. Arbitrators in black armour moved in the open spaces between the craft, checking equipment. Most wore their full carapace armour, the plates gleaming under the hangar-bay’s lights. The same symbol that marked the gunships sat on each of their shoulders. The orange stripes of squad leaders were the only other markings he could see. They were not arbitrators now, but wards of the Inquisition, bound by oath to serve the will of the inquisitor who had summoned them, him and the judge who led them.

They saluted Josef as he passed, sharp and smooth. He returned the gesture, though it felt as ragged as he did. He needed to… No, he didn’t need to sleep. He had tried to sleep and even when he did, it did nothing. He coughed, and tried to not cough again.

‘Khoriv?’ The voice came from behind a cluster of arbitrators. He turned as the group parted. ‘You have been avoiding me,’ said Judge Orsino as she stepped forwards with a whir of exo-armour. She was smiling, but her eyes were sharp glitters. Her head was bare, grey hair cropped close. She walked with a cane, the top capped with a silver eagle’s head. In spite of the wrinkled skin and wasted flesh, he still had the feeling that she could beat back a riot by force of will alone.

‘Not avoiding,’ he said. ‘Time has just not allowed me to–’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I know when I am being evaded, the question is why?’

Josef shrugged, and crossed his arms and thought about ways to deny it. Then he sighed and half turned away.

‘It’s something about this operation, isn’t it?’

‘It isn’t an operation, it’s a crusade. Covenant…’ He stopped himself, and shook his head. He felt angry, he realised. Suddenly and intensely angry.

Orsino looked around at the nearest arbitrators, and gave a small flick of her chin. They bowed and moved away.

‘Go on,’ she said, looking back at him.

‘No, I shouldn’t, it is not my place.’

‘If it isn’t your place, then more has changed than I see.’

Josef was quiet for a moment.

‘He has the bit between his teeth. He won’t let go, and he is…’

‘That is what inquisitors do, my friend, that is the way they are and the way they need to be.’

‘I know, but there is something in him. It feels personal.’

‘And can you blame him? Idris after all…’

‘No, it’s not just that, he is becoming like he was before Argento died.’

‘And that is a bad thing?’

‘It might be. I am… I am not sure. He is out of balance. I don’t want him to face this alone.’

Orsino frowned.

‘Alone? Why would he be alone?’

‘He is always alone.’

‘Yes, but that is not what you meant…’ She was staring at him intently now. ‘Khoriv, you will tell me what is wrong.’

Pain bloomed inside his chest for a second, and he felt a spasm coming. He clamped his will down on it.

‘Nothing,’ he managed to say. ‘Only as I have said.’

Orsino’s stare had hardened.

‘I know when I am being evaded, Khoriv. You nearly had me there, and while I believe that you are worried, that is not what is wrong, is it?’

‘I should go,’ he said, and took a step away. ‘The ship is due to come out of the warp in an hour, there are–’

‘Khoriv, are you ill?’

He looked at her for a second while the world flipped over inside his head.

‘I am fine,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Most of the galaxy has tried to kill me. Nothing has made it yet.’

‘That is not what I–’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I am a very bad person to try and lie to.’

He opened his mouth to reply, and then closed it and shrugged.

‘You want proof? Who is your nastiest?’ he asked, jerking his chin at the nearest squad of arbitrators. ‘They all look tough, but you will have a killer, a real bone-breaker who can always be counted on when you need someone brought in dead.’

‘What are you–’

‘Humour me.’

‘Proctor Gald,’ she called. A man with a clean-shaven head broke away from the group, and bowed to Orsino. His eyes were pale green, Josef noticed, his face slim and set.

Cruel, this one, thought Josef. Gald moved with the relaxed fluidity of someone who knew how to use the muscle they carried. He flicked a gaze over Josef and turned to Orsino. And arrogant, too.

‘Your honour,’ said Gald.

Orsino looked at Josef.

‘The preacher here wants you to show him how good you are in a fight.’

‘Of course, your honour, how many of the squad does he wish me to demonstrate with?’

‘Me,’ said Josef, stepping forward and folding up the sleeves of his robes. ‘Just me, lad.’

Gald’s lip curled a fraction before he could control it.

‘I am not going to… your honour…’

Gald glanced at Orsino.

‘Don’t look at her. I am old and fat, but believe it or not I know what I am asking. Just so that you do too, I am going to ask. If your loyalty to the God-Emperor means that you are ordered to try and beat me bloody with everything you have, will you do it?’

Gald nodded, without even blinking.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you think you can?’

Gald’s lips twitched as he controlled the smile.

‘I am well trained.’

Josef nodded and stepped close to him. When he spoke, his voice was low.

‘So, if I said that you don’t have a hope, and that even from the smell of you I think you are a vicious piece of excrement who enjoys it when he is given an execution mission, and is probably only one step up from a reptile – and if I then gave you the choice of trying to send me to the medics with my jaw hanging off, what would you do?’

Gald kept his face impassive but his pupils had shrunk to needle punctures.

‘I would rip your fingers off and feed them into your fat mouth.’

Josef nodded.

‘Then do it, boy,’ he growled.

Gald met Josef’s gaze and then looked away. For an instant it looked as though he was going to say something. Then he exploded forwards, his first blow so fast that Josef almost missed it and only just got his arm up in time. Force slammed down his forearm as he blocked it. The second blow came hard behind the first, and Josef was stepping backwards as the third whipped past his eyes, catching his nose and spraying blood out across the deck. He took another step back.

‘Good!’ he roared, tasting copper and iron. ‘You are trying!’

Gald paused, his eyes fixed on Josef’s, pale and steady.

Come on, come on, thought Josef. Come on, you cold bastard.

Gald relaxed and flashed forwards, so fast, so fluid, even in armour. Josef was outside the blow by an inch, and felt the shock as Gald realised he was exposed.

‘Good!’

The proctor turned fast, striking as he twisted. Josef moved an inch inside that blow and rammed his forehead into Gald’s face. His nose shattered in a spray of blood. Josef caught his right arm as he staggered, locked the elbow and moved just enough to flick Gald off his feet. Josef pinned him as he fell, and looked down into the cold eyes as the proctor gasped for air.

‘It’s all right, lad,’ he growled softly. ‘I used to teach people who are nastier than you how to do this, and the thing about being old and fat is that I have had a lot of practice.’

He released Gald and stood up. The proctor was breathing hard, blood running down his face.

‘Best patch him up,’ said Josef calmly. ‘He needs to be combat-ready in an hour.’

He turned back to Orsino, wiping the blood from his own face with the sleeve of his robe. The judge did not move. Her eyes were steady on him, her lips pursed, her head tilted to one side, her weight resting on her cane.

‘Like I said – I’m fine.’

He held her gaze, but she did not nod or say anything, and after a moment he turned and walked away between the gunships. She watched him go until he was out of sight – he knew it without looking around.

‘I’m fine,’ he muttered to himself. ‘God-Emperor, please let me be fine for just a little longer.’

He walked on until he found a deserted side passage, then let the coughing and the pain crush him to the floor.

Part Two

SEASON OF NIGHT

Six

‘Brace!’ Cleander von Castellan shouted at the quiet bridge. ‘For Holy Throne’s sake, brace!’ Heads turned towards him. Hands moved to controls out of reflexive obedience, even as puzzlement ran through their minds.

‘Sir–’ began Void Mistress Ghast.

Force snapped through the hull. Structural pillars screamed. A row of system servitors yanked free of their cradles, and slammed into the vaulted ceiling. Blood and black oil spattered onto the deck. Cleander swore and pulled himself straight. The deck was still pitching. Bubbles of oily light were fizzing at the edge of his sight. That was not good. That was very not good. Alarm lights flashed from amber to red through the bridge. Klaxons began to sound.

‘A little late,’ he snarled, and he was pulling himself back upright.

Crew were scrambling back to their positions. Some were still on the deck, where they had slammed down as the warp translation had whiplashed through the Dionysia. ‘Get the medicae crews!’ he roared. Tech-priests and deck officers were shouting, binaric and voidhand’s invective competing with the klaxons.

Cleander saw Ghast slumped over the watch-station. ‘Medics now!’ he bellowed, jumping across to her as the deck pitched. Her face left a smear of blood on the console as he turned her over. Her mechanical jaw hung open. A bead of blood grew at the corner of her eye. ‘Come on, Arabella,’ he muttered. The bead of blood became a fresh red streak down her cheek. ‘Come on, I will dock your pay for dying, you hear me?’

A system console set in the pit beneath the command dais blew out in a wash of black smoke and blue flame.

‘If I don’t get a medic now–’

A figure in teal and red robes bent down beside him.

‘Animus intacta…’ croaked the medicae as she moved Cleander out of the way. He resisted for a second and then stepped back. The medicae was bald. Bulbous red augmetics whirred and focused in place of eyes. She had the hunched look of someone too tall for comfort, and her skin was so pale she looked closer to a corpse than the bleeding woman she was examining.

‘Still alive…’ she said. A pair of snake-tailed servo-skulls buzzed in, needles extending from clusters of metal fingers set beneath their jaws. Drills spun and jabbed towards Ghast’s skull.

‘Wait!’ he shouted. A drill punched through Ghast’s temple. Fresh blood showered out. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Preserving her life,’ said the medicae. Her fingers had grown needles from their chrome tips. ‘That is what you wished, I presume?’

‘What? Yes, but–’

‘Then give me more space, and occupy less of my attention.’

Cleander stepped back, still staring at the old void mistress as blood ran down her face.

‘Sir, we have red condition through lower decks,’ called an officer behind him, quickly followed by another.

‘Fire in compartments one hundred and five through one hundred and ninety, deck seventy-five!’

Another growl of straining metal. Sparks showered through the air. Ghast still wasn’t moving. The medicae’s fingers were a red and chrome blur.

‘Reactor output spike!’

‘We are losing atmosphere…’

‘Hull breach in compartments…’

He blinked. He needed to get hold of what was happening to his ship. He needed to get up and trust that the medicae would take care of Ghast. He needed to start being the captain. He was suddenly aware again of the clamour echoing through the bridge. His head was still spinning.

‘Get me status, position and external sensor data.’

‘Sir,’ answered an officer.

‘And get me vox links to Lady Viola, and the Navigator enclave.’

‘Sir,’ came the replies. He tried to straighten himself, but his muscles were shaking. He felt cold. A bright, bitter taste clung to his tongue.

He had been through bad warp to reality translations before, but nothing like this. They had been running ahead of the storm fronts spreading from Vengeance, one of the three so-called Storms of Judgement. The ship’s two Navigators had been screaming for most of that passage. One of them had lapsed into coma. But they had reached the translation point and dived back into being with margin to spare. Except they hadn’t. Just as the Dionysia had breached the skin of reality the storms had surged. Vast currents of psychic energy had reached through the ether like hands snatching at a toy. Caught between worlds, the Dionysia had been pulled in different directions of reality. It had lasted less than a heartbeat, but it was enough to almost break its hull in two. Phantoms had rolled through the ship as ectoplasmic echoes had chased it into the void. Now it was half blind, burning from within and with half its crew insensible or insane…

Bad. Very bad in fact, but as he kept staring at Ghast’s bloody face, Cleander knew that it was not the storm surge that was making him shake. It was what had happened just before it.

‘Sir, we have vox-link to Lady Viola,’ called an officer.

He looked at his hand. It was trembling on the rail of the command dais.

‘Sir…’

He had felt the surge a moment before it had happened. Not thought it might happen, not spotted something that others had missed, but actually felt reality draw tight and snap back like a rope pulling taut and then breaking. That was why he had shouted to brace. That was why he had known it was going to happen. Because it already had.

‘Brother,’ came Viola’s voice, scratching and popping as it came from the vox-speaker, still controlled and clipped as ever, but edged with what sounded like anger as much as shock. ‘We need external auspex data. We need it now.’

‘What in the name of all that is sacred just happened?’ he said softly, raising his hand from the rail.

‘What?’ said Viola’s voice. ‘What did you say? The link is going. What in the name of all that is sacred just happened?’

Cleander looked up from his hand to where the spindle-figured medicae was rising from beside Arabella Ghast.

Arcs of electric charge raced over consoles as systems flared back to life. A whole new set of alarms began to sound.

‘Proximity alert!’

‘We have multiple vessels and objects in close proximity.’

‘Shields coming online!’

‘Show…’ began Cleander, but there was something wrong with the next word. ‘Show me,’ he managed, but something was wrong with his legs, and the view was swimming in front of his eyes.

Everything was becoming quiet.

Soft.

Slow.

‘Cle…an…d…er…!’ Viola’s voice was a stretched purr over the vox.

‘I might…’ He felt himself speak the words as much as heard them. ‘I might need your help,’ he said, and slid down to the deck with the sound of his sister’s voice and the blare of klaxons following him down into darkness.

The Dionysia tumbled as it came from the warp, spinning end over end, smeared with evaporating ghost light as it met the cold void. Thrusters fired on its hull. Its tumble twisted, but it spun on, fighting the drag of forces that clung to its hull as the warp storm screamed from the wound it had left in reality. Curtains of light stained the stars, hiding the pure black of the night behind bruise-like auroras.

The dead ships were waiting for it, spread out in the dark. Sections of vast hulls slid through the void, the force of their deaths still turning them over like pebbles in a child’s hands. None of them had survived intact. Here, a kilometre-long piece of hull lay close to a bridge castle torn out by its roots; there, a prow turned slowly over, smaller flakes of debris forming a cloud that glittered in its wake. On and on the debris field went out.

The Dionysia met its first piece of wreckage before it could stop spinning. It was one of the smaller chunks, the size of a small hab-block, and serrated like a broken dagger. Its void shields ignited just before impact. Light flashed in the dark. The piece of debris came apart, burning fragments spilling over the ship’s prow as it plunged on.

Viola saw it all unfold in her augmetic eye as she ran onto the bridge. Bal was behind her. Both of them were still wearing their gear from their excursion to the bilge decks.

‘Helm control!’ she shouted, as she leapt onto the command platform.

A deck officer turned from shouting orders.

‘Aye, mistress.’

She stopped when she saw Cleander. Her brother was sprawled in the command throne that he never used. Blood streaked the left of his face, and a wound was clotting on his scalp. Medicae Primus Iaso was bent over him.

‘The Duke von Castellan is alive,’ said Iaso, without looking up.

Viola looked around at the chaos of the bridge. Her augmetic eye was flooding with damage and sensor data.

‘Where is Ghast?’ she shouted.

‘Incapacitated,’ answered Iaso.

On the screen above, a blurred projection of near-space debris.

Viola took two precisely timed breaths and let the world grow still. Shouts and flashes and sound became another strand of data. The information flashing through the screens and chattering from parchment printouts were flows. All of it became like the wind blowing in a forest. It was a technique that one of her savant-tutors had called the Gaze of Heaven, because in reducing the world to that level of data abstraction felt like looking at the world as a god must – everything just an expression of a larger whole, the worst unfolding disaster just a twitch in a flow of variables that had never begun and would never end. It had always seemed to her like a mildly heretical analogy, but having mastered its trick she had to admit that it was utterly accurate.

She saw the tumbling trajectory of the Dionysia, the crew and the warp storm energies billowing through the void around them, and the tick-tick-tick of time as a weave of values and translations. She saw it, and realised that they had very little time amongst the living.

‘I have helm command,’ she shouted, and was already calling orders as the confirming replies came from the bridge crew. ‘Fire port thrusters, course correct a hundred and eighty-seven by a hundred and sixty-seven by eighty-four. Full engine burn on my mark.’

The Dionysia shook and the view on the external pict-feed screens pitched over. Chunks of ragged metal the size of mountains spun past. The remaining void shields sputtered and flared as micro-debris hit them at the speed of cannon shells.

‘Mistress, the shields–’

‘Damn the shields! They won’t take another major impact. We need to dance out of this graveyard.’

‘Mistress Viola von Castellan,’ blurted one of the tech-priests, ‘the sacred cogitators are still processing the optimal pathway out of the debris field.’

‘That is not time we have.’

‘Engines blessed and consecrated for one hundred per cent burn,’ called an enginseer from down in the machine pits beneath the dais.

Viola watched time tick past at the edge of her augmetic eye. Her lips were moving, whispering threads of logic and possibility, and pain was already building in her temples. The problem with the Gaze of Heaven was that human minds were not supposed to function like that. Perhaps the lexmechanics of the Adeptus Mechanicus with their machine-looped brains could cope with it, but with a brain of meat, you couldn’t look down from the place of the gods for long.

The view of the pict-screens was still rolling over and over as the Dionysia kept tumbling, its thrusters fighting against its momentum. The severed prow of a macro-hauler spun into view, massive, looming like a mountain thrown into the night.

She could feel the bridge crew tense. Breath caught in throats. The time values and vector calculations balanced in her mind.

‘Fire main engines!’ she shouted. ‘Full burn.’

Force slammed through the ship. It shot forward, its path corkscrewing. The prow of the macro-hauler spun to meet it. The scream of proximity alerts rose. Then they were running past it close enough that a child could have thrown a stone between the two of them. The Dionysia kept on, its trajectory stabilising, passing through shard clouds, like an arrow shot through the whirl of battle, never wavering even as the bones of dead ships tumbled close enough to knock them from the sky.

Viola swayed, and closed her eyes. A metallic taste filled her mouth, and her skull felt like it was going to explode.

‘Once we are true and clear set course for Dominicus Prime,’ she said. ‘Get us in-system fast.’

She turned as Medicae Iaso straightened from beside the unconscious Cleander.

She was shaking, she realised.

‘Is he all right?’ Viola asked.

‘The head wound was not severe. His collapse was caused by other factors that I am not yet certain of.’

‘Other factors?’

‘Mistress von Castellan, you above all know that diagnosis, like deduction, is best handled without it becoming guesswork.’

Viola felt her mouth open to snap a reply and then closed it. Flecks of light were glittering at the edge of her sight.

‘But in your case I barely need to guess,’ said Iaso, her carbuncle eyes focusing on Viola. ‘Pupils widely and irregularly dilated, vibration in extremities – you are suffering from extreme mental fatigue and a cluster of side effects from cognitive and neural enhancers.’

‘What’s happening?’ Josef called, as he moved onto the bridge and hurried towards the command dais. ‘Blessed saints…’ he breathed as he saw the holo-displays and screens.

‘The storm is closing,’ a strong voice came from behind all of them. Covenant walked into the pulsing alert light. He wore armour over his storm coat, and his psycannon sat on his shoulder, its targeting lens locked on the void displays. The officers and crew turned to bow. A twitch of his hand dismissed the formality as he came to stand amongst those clustered on the dais. ‘These are ships that tried to enter the warp, to flee the system.’

The image of the spinning wrecks danced silently across the displays, yet Viola could not help but think of screams when she looked at them.

‘Chewed and spat out…’ said Josef. ‘Emperor guard the souls of those on board.’

‘The storm is contracting around this location – intensifying, focusing,’ said Covenant, his eyes moving from the images of dead ships to where a projection of the Dominicus System spun in a smaller cone of holo-light. ‘Events are moving quickly.’

‘We will not be able to get out of the system if the storms do not abate,’ said Viola.

Two servitors were lifting Cleander and Arabella Ghast onto steel stretchers. She glanced at her brother. A trickle of blood was running from the corner of his mouth. For a second the thoughts running through her head stopped. Then she looked up and saw the green lens of Covenant’s psycannon twitch up from its focus on Cleander’s face.

‘Take us into the system, full speed,’ said Covenant, and turned and took a step towards the bridge doors. The servitors were lifting Cleander and Ghast’s stretchers, Medicae Iaso walking at their side. Covenant raised his hand to halt them as they passed.

Viola had been about to start issuing fresh orders, but found that she was watching as the inquisitor put a hand on Cleander’s forehead, and closed his eyes. Viola thought that for a second he looked tired, tired and older than he was. His lips moved silently for a second. Then he took his hand away. ‘Take us in. Full speed,’ he said, and began to walk away. ‘The storm is coming fast.’

‘God-Emperor, in Your wisdom, hear the words of Your daughter.’

Severita spoke the words, following the thread of their sound through the tunnels of exhaustion. Grey blurred the edge of her sight, but she kept her eyes steady on the figure clamped within the cryo-casket. The plasteel box was tilted upwards. A metal door sealed its front. Pipes led from the casket’s sides to clattering machines bolted to the floor. Frost covered the casket, stealing its hard edges with growing crystals.

‘Grant my soul strength to undo my sins. Grant me agony that I might reach salvation. Grant me…’

The air was thick, clotted with the heat that thumped from the cryo-machines. Sweat prickled her scalp and ran down her face. The hilt of her sword was against her forehead. Her pistols holstered at her side. The black and red of her armoured bodyglove gleamed under her hessian tabard. Her vigil had lasted for a hundred and eight recitations of the Litanies of Penance and the Pleas for Absolution. She kept her gaze directly ahead, staring at nothing but seeing everything. And the words of prayer rolled on, marking the march of unchanging seconds from present to past, while the Dionysia passed through the night on the way to the future.

She would need to sleep eventually. Even faith had its limits. She would attend to that later, once the ship had completed the passage through the Dominicus System to its target. She just needed to stay focused. She just needed to…

She stood. The sound of prayer stilled on her lips. Part of her mind screamed at her for breaking the ritual as she stepped forward so that she could see through the view slot in the front of the casket. A silent scream of rage roared at her in the voices of every sister she had known. She raised her hand, wondering what she was doing, and wiped the frost from the glass. Enna Gyrid’s face looked back at her with open, unseeing eyes.

‘I have killed many of your kind,’ she said, paused, swallowed and continued. ‘I struck my first blow against a witch on a planet called Rhea. My sword went through it. I don’t know if it was a man or a woman, it was just fire…’ She paused, hot air filling her lungs at the memory of ash rising in a cyclone through the charred building. ‘My sword went right through it, from tip to guard. I could not wrench it free, and the witch pulled away and took my sword with it. I looked for it later in the remains. The blade had melted, even the fire gem in the pommel. Until then I had thought that blessed steel in the hands of the pure could not be stained or broken by the powers of sorcery. That was what we were taught, you see. That was what I believed.’ She took a breath and felt the salt of her sweat sting her eyes.

‘But the sword was destroyed.’ She bit her lip. Beyond the frosted window the frozen traitor – who had not known what she was – lay unmoving. ‘It’s a question, you see. If I was pure then, was the fire which destroyed the sword also pure? Or was the fire impure and so was I? Or is there such a thing as purity at all?’ Severita winced at the last words. Why was she weak? Why did she give her sin greater strength? Why could she not shed the skin of doubt?

‘That is the problem,’ she said, feeling her jaw clench shut after the words. ‘I don’t know the answer. I don’t know if you are unclean, Enna Gyrid, or blessed, or just unlucky. And that is a problem. It’s a problem because the strength of faith is certainty, and I just can’t hold on to that.’

Severita watched the frozen face and tightened her grip on the sword in her hands. The cryo-machines thumped their heartbeat rhythm, and out beyond the metal skin of the ship, the void slid past.

‘God-Emperor,’ she began again. ‘In Your wisdom hear the words of Your daughter.’

+Did you get bored?+

Severita spun around. Lightning arced down her sword as the power field activated. A figure hung in the gloom by the door. Withered limbs and dark blue robes hung from a bald head set in a bulbous collar of chrome. Its bare feet hovered just above the deck. A heat haze shimmered around it. Bubbles of ghost light popped and cracked.

‘You must leave,’ said Severita, fighting her jaw muscles trying to clamp her teeth together. She could taste burned sugar on her tongue. Mylasa – Covenant’s thief of thoughts – drifted forwards, until she was an inch from Severita’s sword tip.

+No,+ said Mylasa’s voice in Severita’s head. +Your part is over for a while. I am sure that fact will come as a relief.+

‘I have no orders to leave from Lord Covenant.’

+Then stay. It is all the same to me, so long as you understand that you will do nothing.+ The psyker drifted forward so that she was facing Severita. +You are good at doing nothing, though from that little break in concentration I saw, you could do with more practice.+

Severita felt the rage and loathing rise in her like a tide. Mylasa’s black eyes were glittering in the pale mask of her face. She held that gaze, feeling her skin prickle with static, then she let out a breath and lowered her sword. Its power field deactivated with a dry crack.

+Well done. That is a lot of control you just showed. Now please get out of the way and let me do my work.+

Severita did not move.

‘What are you going to do to her?’

+She is the acolyte of an inquisitor who, until recently, we thought both an ally and dead. Now we know that Inquisitor Idris is alive and decidedly not friendly, and that this creature is an assassin whose identity has been reshaped by a resurrection cult that was responsible for massacring a conclave of inquisitors. She bore the name Enna Gyrid, but we have no idea who she really is. She showed every sign of being more than a little lethal, and there is a good chance that she is harbouring what you would charmingly call witch powers. What do you think I am going to do to her, Severita?+

Severita did not move for a second, and then stepped back.

+My thanks.+

Mylasa slid into the space in front of the casket.

+In case you are concerned, I have orders not to kill her.+

‘Why would I be concerned about that?’

+I don’t know. I don’t like to pry.+

The slow thud-thump of the cryo-machines filled the silence.

TRUE AND PURE

‘Water, miracle water from the weeping saint, shrine water, true and pure…’

Acia kept close to her grandfather as he began to shake the beaten tin cup while they walked down the main walk of the Palace of Pillars. She could feel the sullen hostility in the air. The pebble on its string rattled against the metal. Curtains hung across the doors of lean-tos twitched as they passed. Her grandfather smiled as he looked at the downcast eyes of the few people they saw.

The Palace of Pillars was not a palace of course, but someone had given it that name and it had stuck. Technically it was not even part of the halls of the monastery. The brick pillars which stretched up to the vaulted arches high above were there to support the floor of structures higher up. The pilgrims had found the space, just like they had the tunnels and forgotten spaces threading through the monastery. They were not supposed to be there, and the shrine guards came down sometimes to clear them out, but they always came back. Where else was there for them to go? All of them had come so far: for hope of healing, or revelation, or peace. Some even found it, but most found that the bones of saints and holy men could not feed them or keep off the cold that blew from the high plateau. These ones were lucky in a sense. Places in the shelter of the monastery itself cost.

Lean-tos of fabric and plastek, stretched over scrap metal frames, filled the space around the pillars. Cooking fires wound smoke into air that reeked of sweat. The bright tatters of prayer flags and saint kites hung from wires strung between the pillars. An icy draught, which had found its way down from the upper levels, stirred the strips and effigies.

‘True and pure…’ They trudged on. Liquid sloshed in the can Acia carried. Her fingers were cold. The hunger pain in her gut was a rising ache. There had been no food for the last two days, and no one had bought the water.

‘Grandfather, they are not going to buy the water.’

‘They will.’

Acia looked up at him with the hard stare of a child whose view does not allow for the comfort of little lies.

‘Why? They haven’t so far?’

‘Because it’s good, and holy, and because the God-Emperor Himself will make it happen.’

‘Why didn’t He do that in the other places we went?’

‘Now, Acia, to question is heresy, remember.’

Acia frowned and stared around her.

‘Besides, we haven’t been here before,’ he said, smiling around as a man stirring a cooking pot looked away from them. ‘These people are closer to the blessed places. They have holiness in their hearts.’

Her grandfather rattled the cup in the direction of a man peering out of an opening between tattered sheets. Acia met the man’s eyes for a second before they vanished.

‘True and pure!’ her grandfather called.

The water hanging from Acia’s back by a rag rope was holy, he believed that, she knew. Everything in this place was holy, from the stones to the people that crowded at its edges and in its roots. It didn’t matter that the water had come from a broken pipe he had found out in the pilgrim sprawl. It didn’t matter that the real water from the weeping saint had lasted only a few minutes and soaked into the ground. It didn’t matter that the can she carried it in had been pulled from a refuse heap. It didn’t matter, because it couldn’t matter.

Acia could almost hear his plea in his smile – ‘Oh please, God-Emperor, let it not matter. Let someone give a coin for a cup. Please…’

‘The Emperor will provide,’ he said, and Acia felt him squeeze her hand.

They turned a corner.

‘Grandfather!’ Acia’s voice was sharp. Two men and a woman barred their path. They had the narrow, sharp expressions of the unforgiving, and iron bars in their hands.

Her grandfather blinked as though only just seeing them.

Acia folded close beside her grandfather. All of them wore tattered scraps of clothes, she noticed, but all had crude blue tattoos covering their right hands.

‘Do you want water?’ her grandfather asked, and she heard the tremble in his voice.

The woman stepped forward. Her rags shifted.

‘That water is not pure,’ she said. She raised a heavy iron bar and lowered it so its tip rested on her grandfather’s chest. ‘The stone saint wept and brought blessings amongst His faithful, but you are peddling lies.’

‘Your pardon,’ he said, taking a step back. A fourth figure, who had slipped behind him without him noticing, nudged him back. ‘Please,’ said her grandfather. ‘We will go… I… just wanted to…’

‘We have touched the true water,’ hissed the woman, her face so close that Acia could see the rotted pits where her teeth had been. Her hands were twisting on the iron bar. ‘We have! We are blessed and you are a blasphemer.’

A hand grabbed the water canister and ripped it from Acia’s grip. The rag-rope strap broke. She fell. For an instant it was slow, like she was watching what was happening but it was not her. She felt her grandfather’s hand slip out of hers, heard his cry crash into her ears.

‘Acia!’ he shouted. ‘Acia, run! Run–’

And the woman swung the iron bar, and her grandfather’s last words ended in blood and shattered teeth.

Blood. Blood falling in a ragged scatter. Wide eyes and teeth clenched with effort.

‘Grandfather!’

And the woman was swinging the bar again, and the others struck too, and her grandfather was falling…

Falling…

Like a bloody doll.

A shattered red ruin for a head.

Strings cut.

Life left as a half-gasped plea for her to run.

And she felt a scream begin to unwind from inside her.

And–

Blackness.

She was standing, because she could feel the ground beneath her feet, but she felt like she was hovering on the edge of waking and sleeping. She could smell smoke… smoke and something else… something rich and bitter… It was quiet too. The quiet of a dream. No, not completely quiet… There was a light pattering, like heavy rain drops.

She opened her eyes.

The men and woman had gone.

Everything within twenty paces had gone.

Dark tatters of fabric and wet, torn shreds of meat hung from the wires strung between the pillars, like storm debris snagged on trees. Red rain was pattering through the silent cavern from the red daubed roof. On the ground near Acia, a flayed and scorched hand sat, fingers still curled around an iron bar.

Acia looked, and the scream that came from her this time was just sound.

Seven

‘Wait,’ Memnon called. Ninkurra paused and turned back to where the gunship was cycling its engines. She had just loosed one hawk into the icy air and was raising her left arm to loose the other. It was midday, but she had known lighter nights. The scrap of light that existed was hidden behind a layer of leaden cloud that promised snow, if she was any judge.

They had set down ten kilometres from the monastery, intending to arrive on foot and unseen. All of them were swathed in thermal cloaks with fur-lined hoods pulled up over their heads against the ice wind. Besides Ninkurra and her master there were two others: Geddon and the looming silence of Cinis, his head hidden beneath his hood. Geddon had taken the additional clothing despite the fact that her scanning and signal implantations made her glow like a walking stove in Ninkurra’s heat sight. A tracked auto-skid carried the main load of their equipment. If anyone had been there to see them, they might have thought they were going into the wilderness rather than to a monastery the size of a city.

‘What is it?’ called Ninkurra, raising her voice above the wind whistling across the surrounding rocks.

‘A ship has just entered outer orbit,’ said Geddon, her patchwork machine-voice scraping against the wind. ‘Our own ship was just moving to the edge of sensor range when it picked it up. The ship is known – it is the Dionysia, last vessel of the von Castellan dynasty, and bound in service to Inquisitor Covenant of the Ordo Malleus.’

The hawk twitched on Ninkurra’s gauntlet but she did not release it.

‘How is he here?’ she asked.

Memnon’s gaze had fixed on the middle distance.

‘He was a Thorian and trained in prognostication. If he is here it is because he has read the auguries. He knows that a prospect will emerge here.’

‘And that we are here?’ asked Ninkurra.

‘Perhaps,’ said Memnon, and then shook his head. ‘This should have been dealt with before now.’ Ninkurra frowned.

‘You say that he took captive an agent involved in the endeavour. Could she have given him information?’

Memnon nodded but did not move. His gaze was still far away. The wind gusted. Above them, Ninkurra’s hawk let out a low cry of hunger.

‘It is possible.’

‘How do we proceed?’

Memnon looked at Ninkurra.

‘The prospect will manifest here, and it will happen soon. When it does it must be removed. This development does not change that.’ He nodded to himself. ‘But the danger to the endeavour must be removed. The agent he has captured must be killed, along with any who have learnt what she may know.’

Ninkurra nodded, understanding what she needed to do without him needing to speak an order.

‘If he is coming to the surface he is unlikely to bring a captive,’ she said. ‘So, the ship…’

Memnon nodded, and then looked up as a large snowflake fell from the dark sky. He held out a gloved hand and caught it on his palm. Another flake spun down, and then another and another.

‘Atmospheric disturbance is increasing,’ buzzed Geddon. ‘I am reading paradoxical charge patterns and etheric disturbance across a significant area.’ The wind gusted and brought with it a wall of white shards to kiss Ninkurra’s face. The snow was settling on the ground already.

‘It is rising,’ said Memnon, as though to himself. ‘It is rising…’

Ninkurra turned back towards the gunship, flicking a hand gesture to the pilot to drop the closing rear hatch. The hawk she had loosed into the sky swooped low and landed on her shoulder.

She turned back just as she reached the ramp. Memnon, with Cinis, Geddon and the auto-skid in front of him, was almost at the edge of the rock bowl.

‘What about Covenant? The word is he is hard to kill.’

‘That is my concern,’ called the inquisitor, and walked on. Ninkurra watched him for a second, and then went up the ramp into the gunship. Seven seconds later it lifted off, thrusters kicking the newly settling snow up into night.

‘How did it take so long to find?’ asked Iacto through the fold of cloth he had pressed to his mouth. The taste of vomit was still thick in every breath, even through the cloth, and brought another wash of the stench. He blinked, trying to hold what remained in his stomach down. The gusting wind brought another lungful of stench, and he had to focus so as not to let it overwhelm him. His head was pounding.

Senior Shrine Guard Loa held out the breath mask she had first offered Iacto before they had entered the drift alley. He had refused then, thinking of the indignity. Now he was sure that vomiting uncontrollably had been a more grievous blow to his holy dignity. Neither Loa nor the squad of shrine guard with them had shown any sign of amusement or contempt – perhaps they thought that in the face of what waited in the pilgrim hole, a little vomit was the least that could be expected.

‘Your holiness,’ said Loa, nodding at the breath mask. Iacto took it, and fumbled the straps over his head. The rubber-scented air that filled his mouth was a blessed relief. For an instant, he thought that he must look strange indeed – robed in grey with a purple stole, hung with his chain of office, and his head hidden by a mask shaped like an exaggerated face of sorrow with a heavy filter plug for a mouth. Set beneath the bronzed lobster helms of the shrine guard they looked intimidating, even fierce. On Iacto it must look bizarre.

The Shrine Guards of the Congregation of the Bearers of the Lamp were neither priests nor members of a holy order. Long ago, the blessed Saint Sebastian Thor had banned the Ecclesiarchy from keeping armed forces. And so, in many places and in many ways, the priesthood had found methods of keeping Thor’s decree and surviving in a universe defined and maintained by war. In the Monastery of the Last Candle, this practically came in the groups of men and women who took oaths to protect the sacred places and those who tended them. Several hundred strong, clad in quilted leather armour sewn with prayer medallions and all bearing iron maces besides their other arms, they were intimidating and effective in keeping the pilgrim-drowned monastery peaceful.

Armed by alms given by pilgrims and bearing no formal connection to the Ecclesiarchy, the shrine guards were technically a militia, raised and maintained by its members out of devotion to the God-Emperor. In reality, they were the enforcers of law and order in the monastery, and the High Sentinel of All Sacred Places wielded as much power as the head of an order. For that reason, Iacto had been careful to find allies within the shrine guard ever since he had begun his ascent, and had seen such cultivation pay off time and again. Loa was one of his most valuable assets: clever, but not too clever, and with enough flaws to exploit that he now owned her utterly.

Now, on the eve of the Festival of Light, a hasty message from his tame guard had brought him here, to a foetid and forgotten part of pilgrim drift as the snow fell from a black sky which would not grow lighter after the passing of night.

‘It took this long to find because there is no reason to come out here,’ said Loa. ‘Pilgrims that live here might be luckier than those further out in the drifts, but they still have nothing worth the trouble.’

They were standing on the top of a flight of steps that led down to the floor of a covered cistern, set in the close-crammed alleys and shacks of the Western Pilgrim Drift. This part of the shanty expanse was so close to the true monastery that he could have thrown a stone and hit its outer wall.

He looked down into the pit again and wished he hadn’t. Under the light of the shrine guard torches the floor of the cistern was dark red, almost black.

Almost.

Hand prints were smeared across its walls. Insects crawled over everything, the buzzing of their wings a low rasp against the wind in the silence.

‘How could this…’ he began to ask, and trailed off, finding that speaking made the taste of bile stronger in his mouth. He coughed and dropped his eyes. ‘It would have taken…’

‘A lot of people,’ said Loa.

‘And no one heard anything?’

She shrugged.

‘There are no pilgrims in the buildings nearby. Either they cleared out, or…’

‘Who else knows?’ he asked. Loa shifted.

‘The High Sentinel has sent messengers to the holy bishop, and to the Voice of the Concordance. I got word to you first, but they will know by now.’

‘This is going to cause a riot,’ said Iacto. ‘There is already trouble in the drifts. Sickness too, spreading fast, really fast. But this is… Heresy.’ His eyes had caught something amongst the buzz of flies, half hidden by shadows.

‘Give me your torch,’ he said, and when she had handed it to him, descended a few steps and held the light up to the cistern wall. Loa hissed a curse from behind him.

On the rough plaster, written in smeared letters that trickled to the ground, were words.

Your god is dead, it read. The hand that had been used to paint it sat at the base of the pillar.

‘Or something worse than heresy,’ said Iacto, blinking back the sudden stab of a headache.

‘What do you mean, your reverence?’

‘I… I don’t know.’

‘Is this… you said you wanted to know about anything significant. Does this…did I…’

He turned and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘You did the right thing coming to me, Loa.’

She nodded, but his eyes had caught on a battered metal can sitting amongst a mass of putrefying entrails, and he thought he might vomit again. He turned away and made towards the safety of the steps up and out of the space.

‘Just the same as before – hunger,’ said Loa. ‘There have been skirmishes for days now since the orders cut their alms. Ten dead this morning over three loaves of bread.’

‘Hmmm…’ He began to walk away, frowning inside the ridiculous breath mask. This new… incident changed everything. When news of it got out, and there was no way it wouldn’t, then things would become unstable, and for all his sins, Abbot Iacto did not like the thought of that at all.

The gunship hatch opened and the wind and snow reached in.

‘It was snowing the last time we were on this planet too,’ muttered Josef, as the air flicked the edge of his robe. He had added a fur-lined cloak on top, and an armoured bodyglove underneath, but the cold blast still stung. ‘Do you think the sun ever shines here, or is it just us?’

Orsino shot him a look, the servo bracing around her neck clicking as she turned her head. He shrugged. ‘Just us then…’

Covenant stood before the opening ramp, his face bare above a red cuirass, and grey storm coat. His sword was sheathed across his back. The mind-linked psycannon on his shoulder was still, its targeting lens steady and focused. Behind him stood Josef and Orsino. The judge wore the full regalia of her office, exo-braced armour under a split black cloak edged with ice-lynx fur. On her head, supported by servo-bracing, was a gilded headdress of an eagle, its claws clutching scales, its beak a lightning bolt. Behind them were Koleg, impassive in storm coat and breath mask; Glavius-4-Rho hunched over to fit in the cabin; and last of all Astropath Epicles, shivering like a leaf despite a swathe of black fur hiding all but his thin face.

‘As much as formality needs to be observed,’ said Epicles, ‘is there any chance this could be over with before half of us, and more importantly I, die of exposure?’

No one replied.

The ramp touched down. Orsino’s black-and-red-clad arbitrators had swept out of the two flanking gunships and were formed up beside the ramp, guns ready and hunter servo-skulls hovering above them. Scanning and targeting beams glittered through falling snow. The engines of all the gunships were still running, ready to launch them back into the sky at a moment’s notice. Another three were circling above, cutting through the rising wind, gun mounts tracing the landing pads and the buildings around them.

A crowd waited at the edge of the pad. Josef could see faces beneath hoods, faces lit by the streaming flames of gas torches carried on iron poles by white-robed bearers. Rows of men and women in the robes of dozens of orders huddled together as though for warmth. From the looks on their faces, though, Josef thought it as much terror as cold.

‘The coming of the Inquisition is like seeing the face of the God-Emperor to some.’ Argento, Covenant’s long dead mentor, had once said that, and Josef had seen its truth many times.

At the head of the throng stood a woman mitred and robed, and bearing a staff topped with a lit candle held under a crystal dome. Gilded chains hung from her limbs, waist and neck, but even bent by their weight he could see the strength in her face before she knelt.

‘In the name of the God-Emperor, we greet and honour His anointed inquisitor and place all under his will, and subject all to his judgement.’

Covenant did not move. On his shoulder the psycannon panned slowly left to right and back, over the kneeling delegation. The targeting lens whirred as it narrowed its focus. Josef followed its movement with his own gaze. There was something wrong, something written in the fear on the faces and their trembling hands. Covenant had seen it, which was why he was waiting. That, and as an emphasis of power.

‘You are whistling,’ muttered the astropath, just loud enough that Josef could hear.

Josef frowned, then realised that he was indeed whistling, quietly but clearly, the tune an echo of times long past.

‘It’s that ridiculous void-farer’s hymn that you inflict on us all whenever the Blessed God-Emperor sees fit to visit you with a scrap of enjoyment,’ said Epicles. ‘I thought you had broken the habit, but maybe it’s just that you are rarely in good spirits in my company.’

‘He sends mysteries to test us, and trials to make us stronger.’

Covenant moved down the ramp. Josef, Orsino and the rest followed. The robed priests and monastic leaders remained kneeling.

Covenant stopped a pace from where the bishop knelt, her symbolic chains pooled on the snow-covered stone beside her. Xilita – that was the name in the files Viola had prepared.

‘What is the darkness that weighs upon this place?’ asked Covenant.

Many of the kneeling figures flinched, and muffled gasps hissed against the snowy wind. Josef watched them. This was not Covenant’s way; he was not an inquisitor who came and used fear to pull petty secrets from the mouths of the masses. He was a scalpel that cut only where it needed to. But he knew the tools and uses of terror and spectacle, even if he chose not to use them.

Bishop Xilita looked up and rose to her feet. Another murmur ran through the crowd. She had not been told to rise. Josef saw her eyes harden as they fixed on Covenant.

‘We should talk where it is less likely that we die of cold,’ said Bishop Xilita, ‘most honoured lord inquisitor.’

Josef smiled in spite of himself.

‘Abbot…’

Iacto was hugging warmth back into himself in front of a fire in his chambers. He turned from the flames as Sister Claudia hurried over to him.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Fire,’ she said, handing him a spool of parchment. ‘The Western Pilgrim Drift is burning. The archdeacon has ordered a cohort of the guard out, and those pilgrims that can reach the Gate of Bells in the next hour are being given shelter.’

‘What?’

‘Your holiness, should–’

‘Fool,’ growled Iacto, crushing the parchment in his hand. It was probably too late now.

‘His order says that he wanted to be sure that the bishop knew he was taking every step to safeguard the monastery and aid the weak of the blessed Emperor’s flock.’

‘Oh, I am sure,’ he spat. ‘I wonder if he didn’t start the damned fires himself.’ He closed his eyes and shook himself. Behind him, the signal set that was his honour and privilege to use as head of his order clattered out fresh a ribbon of parchment. He barely noticed; it was probably some update on the number of souls saved from the fires that Archdeacon Sul would soon be able to point to as a sign of his piety, beneficence and foresight.

Sul’s move made sense. With so much unrest the shrine guard were the foundation of stability. It was as good a position for Sul as Iacto had seen. How in the name of all that was holy had he not anticipated such a simple play.

But… but Sul had not seen what Loa had shown Iacto in the old cistern. Things were not just bad in the drifts. They were… something else.

Maybe this played into his hands. If it went badly in the drifts, if the shrine guard caused a riot now, then Sul would…

Iacto blinked. His head was pounding again, but he had made a decision.

‘Go and try to stop the guards going into the drift,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Claudia. ‘How?’

‘Any way you can. Signal Loa, remind her that I made her and I can cast her down. Get her to stop it any way she can.’

Claudia turned to leave, and then paused and turned back. Iacto was waiting for the pain to fade from his head.

‘Yes?’ he snapped.

‘Why do you want to stop it? If sending in the shrine guards will cause a riot, why stop it? It will ruin him.’

‘Because I have a feeling it might cause more than a riot, and who wants to rule over ashes?’

Loa caught up with the shrine guard cohort as it reached the Gate of Bells. Boots rang on the iron-slabbed floor as they marched in two lines towards the open doors that led out into the noon dark. It was barely past midday but night filled the space outside. The Season of Night began at the peal of midnight’s bell, but the last remnant of daylight was a smudge beyond the snow clouds.

The marching cohort all had round steel shields, with iron truncheons and shot pistols hanging at their waists. Thick fur ringed the wrists and collars of their jackets. One in every five held burning baskets of flame on long poles. Pipes led from the poles to canisters of gas on their backs. They could be used to send a breath of flame out ten paces, but their chief use was simpler – light.

A steady stream of pilgrims was coming through the gate the other way, rag-swathed, heads bowed and dusted in snow. Some clutched bundles that must have been their whole worlds. They moved aside for the passing shrine guards, but kept moving forward into the light and shelter beyond the gate. Some of them looked around as Loa jogged up to the head of the column, but looked away quickly when she glanced back.

‘What are you doing here, Loa?’ growled Gorda, as she reached the front of the marching column. ‘This is not your duty.’

‘You need to wait,’ she said. Gorda turned her masked face to glance at Loa but did not stop moving towards the open door. Silent bronze bells hung in the recessed arch inside the door.

‘Wait? Why, do you have new orders?’

‘The bishop has not been consulted about this,’ said Loa, still breathing hard from the run from the other side of the complex.

‘The archdeacon has given the writ – we go five hundred paces out, and when the sacred hour of mercy is past, we make sure that the less lucky stay out there, and unless you have a fresh message from his hand, you need to get out of the way or get in line,’ snarled Gorda.

‘This is a bad idea, Gorda,’ she shouted above the wind.

‘It’s an order,’ Gorda shouted back. ‘I made oaths, and you don’t get to drop that when you don’t like where they take you. You never did understand that. Now piss off and let me do my duty.’

They were at the threshold of the Gate of Bells. The torchlight streamed above them, and she saw fur-swathed members of the Order of the Key waiting ready to haul the four-metre-high doors shut. The wind hit her as she kept pace with Gorda. The cold sliced through the joins in her armour, and the leather and fabric beneath. The snow was falling heavily, now, carpeting the paved road as it sloped down from the door. The lean-tos and piled shacks of the drift rose up beside them, stacked against the stone of the monastery walls like the remains of scrap and rockcrete beasts who had climbed one atop the other and then collapsed from exhaustion. More pilgrims were staggering up the road. In the distance, Loa could see a wide smudge of fire glow beyond the blizzard.

She paused, biting her lip, then cursed to herself and hurried after Gorda as the shrine guards marched down the road.

Loa glanced back up the road, and could just see the torches burning beside the Gate of Bells. The shacks around them were silent and dark, without a sliver of light or a thread of smoke from a fire burning on a cold night. The glow of the greater blaze was just visible above the roofline. But she could smell it, thick and heavy, the smell of burning plastek and wood barely diluted by the cold air.

The wind was pouring down the snow-filled road, throwing clumps of snow at them. Loa paused for a step, looking up and around. Then she caught up with Gorda and caught the other senior’s arm.

‘You came out here in case the door shutting caused trouble – but where are the pilgrims? This place looks deserted. There should still be people trying to get to the doors or get away from the fire.’

Gorda shrugged free of Loa’s hand, but signalled to stop the column, and looked around. The sound of the wind filled the silence, and the snow the dark.

‘Where are they?’ asked Loa again. She was not just speaking now because Iacto had sent her. She felt as though a shadow had slid into her skin with the cold. A spill of fabric stirred in the slit opening cut into a shack wall. Two stories up a door swung on its hinges as the wind breathed snow into the space within. ‘Where is… anyone?’

Gorda turned as though seeing the pilgrim drift for only the first time. Nothing moved except at the wind’s touch. Loa glanced back at the torch light and the door. A few pilgrims were still struggling up the slope, but the flow was slackening. She should have stopped some of them and asked what was happening in the drift. She wondered suddenly if it was the fire they had been running from.

She was suddenly wishing that she had not agreed to Iacto’s offer to help her become a senior in the shrine guard. She wished that she had not listened to that part of her that wanted to be the one giving orders, not receive them. It had been a false ascent, and she had just swapped one set of obligations for another.

‘There was supposed to be a pestilence…’ said Gorda, as though answering Loa’s thoughts.

‘Then where are the sick?’ said Loa. ‘Thousands of souls in this drift and only that many have gone through the gate. It’s the eve of the Season of Night – they should be fighting to get inside the walls.’

Gorda did not answer, but kept looking at the faces of the silent buildings.

‘Divide by lines,’ shouted Loa to the cohort waiting behind them. ‘Shields up.’ Gorda did not countermand the order and the blocks of men and women spilt into ranks, facing out to the edges of the street, shields touching, iron staves ready. The guards with the fire poles took up positions a step behind the line.

‘What’s that?’ asked Gorda, pointing to the left side of the street at a wooden and rusted metal flight of stairs. A walkway of planks ran along the flaking building. Some fabric had been attached to the post at the top of the steps, and was whipping and snapping as the wind caught it. Loa stared at it. There was something wrong about it, but she could not tell what.

‘Go and look,’ said Gorda to one of the guards at the end of the line. The man moved up the steps, slinging his baton but still holding his shield.

Loa looked to the other side of the street, trying to shake the feeling rattling her skin as the cold dug deeper. She stopped, her eyes fixed on an alley opening between two buildings. There was something moving beyond the snow swirl, something coming closer.

‘We need to get back to the gate,’ she said, but her voice was dry and low.

The guard arrived at the top of the steps, and reached out for the flapping piece of fabric.

Loa’s hand found the scatter pistol at her waist.

The shape in the alley mouth was a blot of colour, growing brighter as the light from the flame poles touched it.

Red… It was someone in red.

The guard on the stairs had hold of the piece of fabric and tugged it out so that the wind caught it.

The figure in the alley stepped closer. It was hunched and shuffling as though old, or carrying something under its red rags.

‘Stay where you are,’ called Loa.

Gorda’s head jerked around.

Loa’s gun rose.

The wind caught the fabric in the guard’s hand and snapped it out like a flag. It was not cloth though. It was wet and slick, and had empty holes for eyes and mouth.

The red figure stopped in the alley mouth.

The guard at the top of the steps screamed, and pitched back.

And the red figure was straightening up, red cloth sliding from it like a shedding skin.

Loa’s shot pistol roared.

A cloud of lead hit the thing that was still unfolding from under its red robe, and in the gun’s flash, Loa saw something that looked starved and withered, its flesh streaked with blood and hung with hooks. But its face… its face was old and wrinkled, and its mouth was sewn shut. The shot punched it backwards and it was falling, limbs tangling in red rags.

A shout echoed out behind Loa. She twisted.

Figures were standing on the roofs and in the mouths of every alley and door. Red rags, streaked with crude dyes, flapped in the wind. Metal masks hid some of their faces. Others were bare to the freezing air, wrapped in barbed wire and streaked with blood. They were silent for a second, unmoving in the after-echo of Loa’s gunshot. The lines of shrine guard seemed frozen, the whole scene a pict image through which snow fell.

Then the figure that Loa had shot levered itself off the ground.

Loa aimed and fired.

A new hole tore into it.

The figures in red shouted and leapt forwards. Some of the shrine guards had drawn their pistols. Scattered shots rang out.

The thing in front of Loa jerked forwards, famine-thin limbs juddering. A heat haze blur surrounded it. Loa broke the breech of her shot pistol. She could smell burning hair and incense. The shells dropped into the breech and she snapped it closed as she raised it to fire. The thing gripped her as the shot punched into its gut. It rocked in place but did not let go. Someone had stitched the tips of broken knives onto its fingers. She could feel them digging into her armour. Loa felt her thoughts fray. She was only dimly aware of the sounds of fighting all around her.

The thing held her up to its face. Wisps of hair blew around it. It looked at her. Its pupils were black slits in amber. It opened its mouth, ripping flesh and stitches. The smell of sweetness and burning poured out with its breath. Cracks of flame were spreading across its skin.

‘Help me…’ it gasped. ‘They said… he said it was truth.’

And then it came apart in a wave of fire and lightning.

Josef felt the warmth fold around him as they stepped out of the biting cold into a stone-lined passage that led off the landing platforms. Candles burned in thousands of niches cut in the wall. Covenant was a pace in front of him, walking beside the bent-backed bishop. The high priest was saying something about pilgrims, and food supplies.

Josef glanced up, rubbing his hands together. More candles sat in silver candelabras hanging from the ceiling. The metal was so tarnished it was almost black. The gilded halos of painted saints and warrior angels gleamed. The air smelled of tallow smoke and dust. For a second, and for a reason he was not sure he could put into words, he felt more peaceful than he had in months.

‘Why are you smiling?’ snapped Epicles from just behind him.

‘How can you tell?’ growled Josef, without turning to look at the astropath. ‘Unless you have been lying all this time, you are blind.’ He paused. ‘No, in fact, that is perfectly likely.’

‘I can’t see you smile, you idiot, but you are whistling again, and I can only imagine you do it with a grin on your face.’

Josef’s steps slowed.

‘I am not whistling,’ he said.

‘Yes you are. Just because I am blind does not mean I can’t hear. There, you have started again now.’

He was about to look behind him when the candle flames winked out.

The key-keepers on the Gate of Bells were shepherding the last pilgrims over the threshold when there was a flash out in the night. They flinched back, eyes clamped shut. They could see shapes in the images glowing on their retinas, shapes like wings and claws. One retched, half-falling, hands slamming into the worn stone of the passage floor. The other key-keepers were dragging and pushing the heavy doors shut, shouting at each other.

A kilometre away, green fire reached up into the snow-blurred night. A second later they heard another explosion scream into being. The sound reached across the distance instantly. It shook in their skulls: babbling, shrieking, the clamour going on and on, but it felt distant now, as though they were seeing and hearing through a hard sheet of crystal.

Above them, the bells – silent for thousands of years – shivered. Another of the key-keepers vomited. The rest stood, staring for a moment, as the fires washed out and new buildings began to burn, pinned in place as the light of flames painted nauseating colours amongst the falling snow. Then they saw the first of the ragged figures running up the road towards the doors. Some were burning, tatters trailing smoke as they ran. Knives, cleavers and hooks gleamed in their hands.

The key-keepers moved then, screaming at each other as they turned the handles to haul the doors shut. Up the road the tide came, silent, bare feet leaving bloody prints in the snow. Their last view before the doors closed was of metal masks nailed over faces, fingers and tatters of skin hanging from them like the jewels of a great king. Then the doors closed and the iron bars fell across them, and above them the bells tolled.

Darkness swallowed them instantly.

Josef had unslung his hammer from his back before he had taken a second breath.

Someone screamed.

‘God-Emperor, have mercy…’

‘We repent…’

‘Mercy…’

‘Silence,’ roared Josef.

The targeting lens on Covenant’s shoulder cannon lit as it spun.

‘Negative for targets,’ called Koleg, ‘but the temperature has dropped.’

And then the candles lit again. The flames burned bright and white, spearing upwards, growing as they burned like artillery flares. The tallow was hissing as it melted and flowed.

Josef snarled, and clamped his eyes shut against the light.

‘No, no, no!’ The shout tore the air. Josef opened his eyes, turning. Epicles was curled on the floor. Blood flowed down his face and between the fingers of his hands clamped to his ears. Josef was beside him. Behind him he could hear the sound of running feet as some of the bishop’s entourage fled.

‘Calm,’ said Josef, as he lifted the astropath to the side of the passage. Epicles was scrabbling at Josef’s arms, like a child in the grip of a nightmare. ‘We are here. We are here.’

The paint and plaster on the ceiling was charring. Smoke was billowing up the walls from the blazing candles.

Running steps came up the corridor, guns rising to greet whoever was coming.

‘Bishop Xilita!’ A loud clear voice echoed down the corridor.

Josef looked up from Epicles’ bloody face.

A Sister of Battle in the armour of the Order of the Argent Shroud was striding towards them. The hair framing her dark face was ash-grey. A sword was sheathed across her back, a bolter in her hands. Bishop Xilita looked around. Koleg’s pistol had snapped up, finger tight on the trigger.

‘Do not fire!’ shouted the bishop. The authority in that voice was strong enough that, if it had been anyone other than Koleg, he might have flinched. The specialist’s aim did not waver.

‘Lord,’ he said.

‘Hold fire,’ said Covenant. He had not drawn his sword but his psycannon was panning back and forth, hunting for threats.

‘It is too bright,’ gasped Epicles. ‘Too dark. The ferryman and the coin-bearers are here. Too bright beneath the earth, too dark to see…’

‘Bishop Xilita,’ said the Sister of Battle, not pausing in her stride.

One of her attendants was trying to pull her away. She shrugged the man off.

‘There has been an incident in the Western Pilgrim Drift.’

‘When?’ snapped Xilita.

‘Moments ago. They are running to bring you word, but panic is boiling up from the western cloisters. They are saying that no one lives in the Western Drift, that the fires were breathed by witches and that creatures of the dark beat against the doors.’

‘The shrine guard?’

‘A hundred had already gone out to regulate the pilgrims permitted within the walls. They are gone.’

‘Gone. Why were they there in the first place?’

‘The High Sentinel–’

‘Western Pilgrim Drift,’ said Orsino, cutting across the Sister of Battle’s words as she came to stand next to Covenant. ‘That is the area seven kilometres west according to the data. If we loft the gunships now we can have three units there in minutes.’

‘Do it,’ said Covenant. He looked at Josef, who was kneeling beside the shivering Epicles. ‘Go with them.’ Josef started to rise. One of Orsino’s arbitrators bent over Epicles.

Covenant’s gaze moved to the Sister of Battle. ‘You as well, Sister Agata.’

She looked surprised at his use of her name. Then she bowed her head, though there was reluctance to the gesture, thought Josef.

‘You are the inquisitor,’ she said, as though half in answer and half in question.

‘I am,’ said Covenant, turning to look at the bishop and the others still clustered together as the flaring candles finally dimmed. ‘I am Covenant, and in the name of the Holy Ordos of the God-Emperor of Mankind, I place this monastery and all those dwelling here under my command and will.’

Eight

‘What in the eyes of sacred Terra is that?’ asked Bal. Viola glanced around from the enhanced view of Dominicus Prime’s northern hemisphere. The image filled the space above the Dionysia’s command dais, turning the view beyond the ports into a magnified sheet of detail laced with auspex data. The ship was in low orbit, sunk as deep as it could go into the gravity well and holding station above the Monastery of the Last Candle. It was there to provide oversight, signals and support if needed. That had been the intention, up until a few minutes before.

‘It’s a storm,’ said Viola, her eyes flicking over data cascading across three sets of screens.

‘Don’t storms that size come from somewhere?’ asked Bal.

‘Yes,’ she said, not moving her eyes, trying to soak in information and form a conclusion, any type of conclusion about what was happening.

The storm had sprung up as the drop-ship had descended, spreading across the planet’s north like ink poured into a bowl of water. It had grown fast, in contradiction to any atmospheric models or data.

‘Mistress Viola, we cannot get signal penetration through the storm layer.’

‘Multi-spectrum interference…’

‘Wind speeds rising…’

‘So how does something like this–’ began Bal, but she cut the lifeward’s question off before he could finish.

‘It is not natural.’ She turned and looked at Bal and wondered again why she had not dismissed him when she had come up into the command deck. There were twenty household troops within shouting distance, and a personal lifeward at her elbow was largely superfluous. That, and he kept asking questions. ‘There is no reason for it to be there. It should not be there. It should not be that big or have formed so fast.’

‘Mistress von Castellan, the secondary astropath is signalling that there is a major etheric disturbance.’

‘Multiple storm cells forming…’

‘Communication links to Crow Complex lost… Signal relay to Monastery of Beneficence breaking down… Mistress, we have lost all direct communication to the surface.’

Suddenly, the bridge seemed to quiet. On the image filling the space above the command throne, the swirl of storm cloud sat across the dark face of Dominicus Prime. Clusters of signal data flickered from amber to red.

‘The astropaths–’

‘The secondary astropath has fallen into a delirium, Mistress Viola,’ answered the signals officer before she even finished the question. ‘Telepathic connection via Astropath Epicles is not possible.’

‘Thank you for clarifying that,’ she snapped.

‘My apologies, mistress,’ called the officer, and she could see the signals officer’s face stiffen. She took a breath. The stimms and cognition enhancers were playing a merry dance with her nerves.

She needed rest. She needed silence. And that was exactly what the present would not allow her.

‘Navigators report etheric disruption is rising,’ called another communication officer, a vox-tube pressed to her ear.

‘Sensors are failing, mistress…’

‘Interference flooding auspex filters…’

She needed to focus. She needed to process the data of what was happening and select a strategy. She needed to start making decisions. She…

‘Mistress Viola, we are blind.’

Blind…

She thought of Cleander in the medicae chamber, eyes closed, surrounded by the thump and hiss of machines. She had only had the time to see him once since they had entered the system. He had looked… thin. Weak. Not like her brother at all. Nerve damage and cranial bleeding, Iaso had said.

‘Try this.’ She looked around, shivering and blinking, wondering how long. ‘Just a second or so,’ said Bal, holding out a small tarnished silver flask. ‘You only phased out for a second. No one noticed.’ Around them, the din of the bridge still surged and growled.

Viola stared at him and then the flask.

‘Nihren, from my home, distilled from parchment mulch, would you believe.’

She took the flask and took a swig. Fire spread through her.

‘It’s…’ She coughed the word. ‘It’s vile.’ Her eyes were watering.

Bal grinned as he took back the flask. ‘But good for taking the edge off a stimm burn when it’s building up – seen it before, more than a few times.’

Viola shook herself. The jolt of spirits had helped. The shadow of a grin was still on Bal’s face as he tucked the flask into his belt beside a holstered pistol.

‘You were wrong,’ she said coldly, looking back to the clusters of officers, servitors and crew. ‘They all noticed. On a ship everyone notices everything. They have all seen me overload before, so don’t make it seem like I can’t cope now, understand?’

‘Yes, mistress,’ he said crisply, his face now a stiff mask.

‘All defences to full alert. Armsmen to the command and engine spaces. If we are blind then let’s not be stupid too.’

The replies echoed up, but she hardly heard them. Her eyes were back on one of the clouds blanketing the planet’s arc beyond the viewport. As she watched, a kilometre-wide patch of cloud strobed with lightning.

‘Target vessel ninety per cent sensor-blind,’ said the tech-priest wired into the gunship’s systems.

‘Ninety per cent?’ said Ninkurra, not looking up from checking the void suit’s fit and seals. The gunship was rattling and bucking as they boosted through the last layers of Dominicus Prime’s atmosphere. She preferred more preparation for a task like this – a lot more preparation. ‘There is a lot in that ten per cent that could turn us into vapour as soon as we break atmosphere.’

‘True,’ said the tech-priest, stirring in its system cradle. It was a bloated, cable-wrapped thing, with data sockets for eyes, but for some reason a perfectly formed mouth of white teeth. ‘The rogue trader vessel designated the Dionysia does possess armament capable of destroying us, but its power output suggests that it is focusing on the planet, and trying to make a signal connection with the surface.’

‘How long until they might have a clear view of us?’

‘Six minutes, zero-three seconds.’

‘Are our countermeasures functioning?’

‘To the best of my awareness our etheric shielding has maintained the function of this craft’s sensor countermeasure systems.’

Ninkurra did not reply.

The gunship was not conventional, even for the myriad forms of craft that came from the forges of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Hunch-winged and angular, it was heavily armed, and studded with exotic systems countermeasures. Its proportions seemed subtly wrong to her, as though its angles were intended to confuse and its proportions were intended for beings larger than a normal human. For covert infiltration and warfare, though, it was a tool beyond compare. She just hoped that it proved a match for whatever the rogue trader ship had.

She lowered the void helmet over her head and heard it hiss as it pressurised. Her two psyber-hawks were comatose and stowed in the vacuum cylinders with the rest of her equipment. Her preparations, just like the plan she was following, had been formed of necessity in the time it took the gunship to reach the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. She had considered other options, other ways of approaching the Dionysia, and longer timelines of infiltration, but the atmospheric and etheric disturbance had made up her mind to hit the rogue trader ship without pausing.

‘We have a clear visual feed if you desire direct observation of our course,’ said the tech-priest.

‘Show me,’ nodded Ninkurra. A second later a pict-panel on the other side of the compartment lit with multi-coloured static. The blur of colours resolved into an image of night streaked by distant whirls of light from where the warp storms were curdling the starlight. Set against it was the dagger-form of a ship, its flanks grey stone and black iron, its prow a golden barb. It grew even as she looked at it, the serrations on its spine becoming towers and basilica. It was small compared to the great warships of the Imperial Navy, or the bulk of a macro-hauler, but it was still a city cast into the vacuum in the skin of a cathedral.

‘What about an ingress point?’ she asked.

‘I have located a suitable ingress point that requires no direct hull breach and affords minimal probability of detection.’

Blue lines carved off a section of the image and it grew to fill the screen. It showed an area of the ship’s hull where a deep gouge had bored through stone and armour to leave a black puncture wound.

‘Battle damage,’ said the tech-priest, ‘full outer skin breach, forty point two four metres at its widest point.’

‘Recent?’ she asked.

‘Yes, and they have been unable to effect repairs, so it is probable that they have sealed internal bulkheads around the internal damage.’

‘And the probability that they have filled the area with murder servitors and gun platforms?’

‘Unknown, but that will be evident in one hundred seconds. Brace for ingress.’

Ninkurra felt the mag-harness grip the back of her void suit and yank her against the compartment wall. The image of the pict-screen blinked to what must have been a true eye view. The side of the Dionysia loomed, the pinprick lights of viewports a false field of stars. She could see the needle points of sensor towers and the light reflected from the planet beneath catching on its prow.

‘Passing void shield envelope,’ said the enginseer.

The gunship buzzed as exotic energies played over its hull.

‘They have active shields,’ she breathed.

‘And an active and alert defence turret system that has almost identified us as a target twenty times in the last ten seconds.’

‘Is that supposed to be comforting?’

‘I do not know what you mean. The statement was accurate. Comfort is not a value that I can analyse.’ His stream of speech paused and he turned his head as though looking out through the hull with eyes that he no longer had. ‘We are about to enter the hull breach.’

The screen-view of the void outside went black. The gunship juddered as vector thrusters fired, cutting its speed and nudging it forward through the cavern of twisted girders and torn decks.

‘Setting down,’ said the enginseer. ‘No indication of detection.’

The fuselage rocked and then shook as landing feet locked to the deck.

Ninkurra stood, harness snapping free. She floated for a second and then activated the mag locks in her boots and her feet clamped to the floor.

‘Opening external hatch,’ said the enginseer.

The atmosphere inside the cabin hissed into the dark as the rear hatch dropped.

‘Once you are out of this craft I will not be able to communicate with you,’ said the enginseer as she moved towards the darkness beyond the open hatch. She looked back at the bloated figure in its nest of cables. ‘Any signals, even short range, risk detection. I will shut down the craft and its spirit, and I shall enter a dormant state until you return.’

‘Of course,’ she said, and stepped down the ramp tugging her floating vacuum cylinder.

‘The products of good fortune attend you in your undertaking,’ said the tech-priest.

She paused and looked back again – the gunship was already darkening, system lights winking out one after another. She thought of saying thank you, but in the end she just nodded and stepped onto the Dionysia.

‘That’s it…’ The voice came from the glowing light in front of his eyes. It was somehow both melodic and cold, like a note struck on a scalpel. ‘That’s it, my lord duke, you can wake up now.’

Cleander tried to say something, but the words clogged.

‘I said wake, your grace, not speak. It will take a little longer for the anaesthetics to wear off. They are nerve specific, and your jaw and tongue are low down on the list.’

The light became sharper. He saw the outline of a head and shoulders bending over him. Something silver glittered as a hand withdrew from beside his neck. More details: crystal-lensed eye implants beneath a bald scalp, cyan and crimson plastek robes, needle-tipped fingers. A chromed servo-skull buzzed above them, probe- and fine manipulator-tipped tentacles hanging beneath it. It dipped closer, gripped his left eyelid with a tiny claw, pulled it wide and flicked a beam of light across his pupil. He tried to turn his head away, but nothing moved. The servitor let go and floated next to the bald figure, and burbled something that might have been words if those words had been spoken by a clockwork toy.

Iaso… that was the bald figure’s name – Medicae Primus Iaso. She was his chief, and very expensive, medicae attendant on the Dionysia, and this small, bright space with its chemical smell, and the low beep and murmur of subtle machines, must be one of the medicae chambers in the ship’s command levels. He was here because… because…

‘I had instructions from the Lady Viola to ensure that she was present when you regained consciousness.’ Iaso looked at him. Her carbuncle eye lenses were like two black pearls reflecting back the image of him lying on a white pallet hung from the ceiling by an articulated piston arm. White cloth and red plastek bindings covered his body. ‘I thought, though, under the circumstances, that it might be better if we talked first. You may have to lie to your sister about it, but your grace is well practised at that.’

Some of the numbness was leaving his body. He could feel a series of dull aches creeping through his muscles. He tried his jaw and tongue again, and found they moved, though they felt heavy.

‘Wh–’ he began, and gagged on the dryness of his mouth. Iaso flicked a hand and the servo-skull buzzed forward and squirted water between his teeth. It tasted metallic. ‘What… What happened?’ he managed.

‘A simple question with a complex answer. The simple part is that you suffered an overload to parts of your nervous system and a series of secondary micro-bleeds in your skull, all not helped by the fact that you fell and slammed your patrician face into a console, did superficial damage to your cranium, and gave yourself severe concussion. You have been in an induced coma for the last few days while I dug around inside you and did my best to repair the damage. That’s the simple part.’

‘The storm…’ He clamped his eyes shut for a moment. Some of the aches were now becoming sharp pains. ‘The storm as we came out of the warp… the wrecks…’ He felt his still-numb muscles try to jerk him upright. ‘Ghast, what happened to–’

‘Void Mistress Ghast is stable, but it will be some time before she is recovered enough for duties.’

He stopped trying to move, and found that he had just enough movement to give a nod.

‘You have performed your duties excellently. I need to return to the bridge. I will ensure that you are reward–’

‘But it’s you that is the real question, your grace. You see, my craft is my life and soul, just as it was my father’s and his mother’s and so on, back Terra knows how far. I take it seriously.’

‘Under the circumstances, I would find it difficult to believe anything else–’

‘I do not allow myself to fail in my duty of care, you understand?’ She had folded her hands over each other and was perfectly still. Only her mouth moved. ‘The indentures and writ that your sister imposed on my employment only enhance that duty. So understand me, Duke von Castellan, when I say my inducing temporary paralysis below your neck is for your good and my obligation to your wellbeing, rather than any order you may give me.’

He stilled his mind, thoughts suddenly sharp.

What was this woman? He thought of the rivals and enemies he had made in the decades of plying the void. He thought of the spite of alien lords, and human queens. He thought of all the things and people he had seen serving Covenant, and wondered which of them had sent this creature to infiltrate his ship.

He tried to move his fingers, to feel if the digital weapons he normally wore as rings were still there.

‘Who sent you?’ he croaked, playing for any time he could get.

Iaso flinched and shook her head.

‘You think I mean you harm? Did you not listen – I will do everything to keep you alive and healthy. But you were about to ask me to let you get up and leave this chamber, and I can’t do that.’

Cleander frowned, puzzled. If she was an assassin she could have killed him already. If she wanted information, this was a strange way of extracting it.

‘My sister will demand that you let me leave.’

‘Not if it will kill you, and not if you don’t try to leave.’

‘Why would trying to leave kill me?’

Her mouth moved in what might have been a sad smile.

‘Simple questions, but I have a feeling all the answers are complicated.’ She shook her head as though trying clear it. ‘And the questions are what I woke you to ask, and the answers… well, they are yours to give.’

Something in what she had said stopped the whirr of thoughts. A chill spread slowly through him. He closed his eyes for a second, nodding to himself as understanding slid into place.

So many choices, he thought, so many things done to run the edge of time for just a little longer.

‘You said that you went digging around in me.’

Iaso nodded.

‘Yes. And the answer to your earlier questions are that I don’t know what happened with the storm, nor exactly what caused your reaction.’ She paused for a second, and he looked up at her. ‘But I have an idea it might be something to do with the alien technology wrapped around your central nervous system.’

Severita watched as the servitors uncoupled a set of the cryo-coolant tubes from the side of the casket holding Enna Gyrid. Gas fumed the air in the small chamber for a second. One of the servitors limped to a gauge bolted to the wall behind the casket, and tapped it with a finger, the gesture oddly stiff.

‘Temperature rising,’ it droned, and limped back to its fellow next to the banks of hissing machinery at the side of the chamber.

+Are you sure you must be here for this?+ Mylasa’s thought voice spoke inside Severita’s head. The psyker pivoted slightly, her robes and the toes of her withered feet brushing the floor lightly. A worm of cold light earthed through the gap between her and the floor. +Genuinely, I know that I make you… uncomfortable, and what I am going to do…+

‘I stay,’ Severita replied, without looking away from the cryo-casket. Some of the frost had started to melt on the glass view slit. She could see Enna’s closed eyes inside.

+Very well,+ sent Mylasa, and turned back to the thawing casket. +But I don’t think you are going to find this pleasant to be around.+

Severita felt static dance up her arm. Worms of green charge began to dance on the decking. Mylasa suddenly seemed slightly indistinct, as though Severita was looking at her through a fine sheet of falling water. A halo of cold light was building around the psyker’s head. Severita braced herself. A jagged cord of light speared out of Mylasa and poured into the casket. In the second before she forced it out of her head, Severita thought she saw an image of a bird with bright green plumage flash across her thoughts and plunge down into a dark sea under a silver moon.

Viola waited for the inner door of the infirmary airlock to open. Gas billowed from the ceiling. It felt cold and smelled of chemicals. For a second, surrounded by the fog, she let the exhaustion creep onto her face. She winced, rubbing her palms across her eyes. She wore a fresh uniform – a blue velvet officer’s coat over a cream silk waistcoat – but the freshness and composure was an act of will.

They were hanging in the void, blind to what was happening on the surface. She had her orders from Covenant to hold in place, and that is what she was doing, but as the storms closed in – real and etheric – it seemed like sitting and waiting for disaster to come to them. Actually, that was exactly what they were doing, and they were doing it deliberately – something dark was rising and they had come to meet it.

The chem-fog cleared. As the inner airlock door opened, Viola had her features recomposed into a picture of perfect control.

‘Mistress Viola,’ said Iaso. The medicae primus was waiting just inside the chamber. Viola’s eyes went to the frame that her brother lay on. His eyes were closed, and a crisp white sheet covered him to his neck. Servo-skulls hovered close to him, and a host of tubes and cables led from beneath the sheet to steel and glass machines that hissed and bubbled like old men drowning in their own phlegm. He was still, though, chest barely moving.

‘Has he regained consciousness?’ asked Viola.

‘You gave orders that you were to be informed if he had,’ said Iaso, crisply.

Viola nodded, still looking at her brother.

‘He never wanted it, you know,’ she said, and immediately wondered why.

‘But that did not stop him taking it,’ said Iaso. Viola shot her a hard look.

‘My apologies, Lady Viola. It was an inappropriate observation.’

Viola shook her head.

‘But an accurate one. You were not with us then, of course, but when we were riding high, I wondered if he knew how to stop.’

‘A family trait, perhaps.’

Viola shot the medicae another look.

‘My apologies again, but I can’t unsee what I see. I don’t know what the savants of your clan did to you or the exact pressures of your position, but I can see that you are suffering from acute mental fatigue, and that the cocktail of stimulants in your blood is doing a good job of stopping you falling over, but that is a delicate balance to hold.’

‘You know the first xenos race he made contact with nearly killed him. He barely got away alive, and the profits barely covered the losses. That was how he lost his eye. Refused to have it replaced. But I have never seen him more alive. He had found something.

‘And from then there was no way back, not for him. There were other ways to reverse our fortunes… Many other ways. But from then the stakes just went up, and up. In the end, when we started to lose, the only thing he was going to do was risk what was left on the longest odds he could find. It was freedom I think, the only freedom he ever really had – the freedom to throw the dice and wait for them to fall.’

She gave a snort of humourless laughter.

‘I know that sounds strange. How can someone with so many choices and so much wealth not be free? But chains are real if they are all you can see.’

She blinked, shook herself, realising that she had said more than she intended.

‘If I may say, my lady, realising that it may overstep boundaries of familiarity… I wonder why you would follow him and help him on such a path?’

Viola did not answer, but looked back at where her brother lay.

‘Will he recover?’

Iaso turned her head slowly to look at Cleander, and then back to Viola. Her face was unreadable, as if she had been asked the time.

‘It is possible.’

+Retrace your steps.+

There were hands on Enna’s head, on the back of her head. Pushing her down. Holding her down. The water was in her mouth. In her lungs.

Air.

Please, air.

And the air was streaming into her in silent gasps that were the beginning of drowning.

Her head pulled, and the surface of the water exploded to a flat black mirror.

Time was flowing backwards.

A mirror face looked up at her. She looked down at it.

And the mask of rags dropped over her head.

‘Revelation…’ came the hiss of voices around her, like a promise.

+Retrace your steps.+

‘This way,’ said Idris, as the door closed. ‘Keep close.’

The corridor sucked her back down towards the dark of her sleep.

The sounds of their feet on the grey marble floor were gunshots in the quiet. The candles lining the walls were dark and unlit.

Idris was in front of her. Layers of black silk swirled around her. Pearl-tipped pins held the piled curls of her hair above her head.

‘I have been looking for you for a very long time,’ said Idris.

At the end of the corridor behind them a candle in the open cell door snuffed out.

Darkness embraced them.

She folded down onto a bed in a small cell, and slid back to the point between sleep and waking.

Idris was standing above her, looking down. She had a candle in her hand.

‘Revelation…’ said Idris softly. ‘Wake…’

+Retrace your steps.+

The door closed.

‘Why?’ she called out.

The man turned and walked to the door. His red cloak brushed the floor.

‘For everyone,’ he said.

‘For who?’

‘It is best,’ he said.

His eyes met hers.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Why am I here, my lord?’

There were flecks of grey in his beard, she noticed. He looked behind him, at the cell door, where a figure in pale robes stood, its face veiled.

‘I am sorry,’ he said.

BETWEEN YOUR SERVANT AND HARM

Acia crouched in the space between the bases of the statues. Looking out she could see just the dark, flat and black at the end of the narrow space she had crawled through. Everything was quiet, the echoing quiet that she did not like. But that meant that she would be able to hear the footsteps of anyone coming close. No one had come past her hiding place since she had dowsed the torch lighting the passage beyond and wriggled into the bolthole.

The monastery was filled with places like this, places that were as quiet and still as the pilgrim holes were bustling and loud. She had found others like them the few times when grandfather had come in from the drift and fallen asleep in a shrine nook. She had gone looking into the quiet places then, and found that there were more of them than people thought. Passages filled with dust and darkness, chambers where statues looked down from behind cobweb veils. Stairwells behind doors whose hinges could barely move for rust.

She had wondered why the pilgrims did not come to those places. They would be better than the creaking refuse hovels that were the drift. If they took places like the Palace of Pillars, then why not these smaller pockets of nothing? After a while of padding through the shadows, she had realised why – they didn’t know they were there.

Now, squeezed into the dark between two statues, she hoped that no one knew that this place was there.

She heard a sound like a boot on stone. Close.

She held her breath. Had they followed her up the long spiral of stairs? Had they found the door that led to this chamber?

They had seen her. She knew they had. They had seen her. As she ran from the Palace of Pillars there had been eyes that had seen her, voices that had called out.

‘Witch!’

She had run, and run, and found a space in the quiet dark and prayed to the God-Emperor just like she had been taught.

‘Witch…’

And now she was hearing footsteps, clear now, and coming closer.

‘Witch…’

The breath was burning in her lungs. The steps stopped just at the end of the space she had squeezed into. She could hear breathing, heavy and wheezing. There was a smell too, like… iron, or meat before it was cooked, and something whispering and black was coiling up out of her thoughts. She thought of what she had opened her eyes to in the Palace of Pillars. Scorched. Torn. Tattered. And the heavy, sticky drip-drip that was the only sound in the vast space.

Her lungs were filling with pain. The old prayer went around and around her thoughts faster and faster, as the time went on and on.

God-Emperor, who protects all, hear this prayer, and stand between Your servant and harm…

A sound of feet shifting on the stone, turning.

God-Emperor, who protects all, hear this prayer, and stand between Your servant and harm…

A grunt of breath, so close that she imagined she could feel it.

God-Emperor, who protects all, hear this prayer, and stand between Your servant and harm…

A last grunt of resignation, and then the sound of feet on stone was going away. When there was just silence, Acia gasped in gulps of air. Only after several minutes did she stop, and then the tears came, falling silently in the dark, as the only prayer she remembered faded from her mind.

Nine

Snow was spiralling through the open side door of the gunship as it banked around the monastery spires. The whole frame was pitching and yawing. The wind was a gale. Josef could see the wing lights of the other craft dancing as they fought the wind.

‘Sir, we are coming up on the target.’ The pilot’s voice was loud over the vox – it was the only way to hear anyone over the sound of the engines and the wind. ‘Atmospheric conditions are deteriorating. If we set down then we won’t be able to get airborne again.’

‘Hover, drop and pull away,’ said Josef without pausing. ‘Hold steady for fire support or extraction.’ Mission command was his as Covenant’s proxy. He had never worked directly with arbitrator units in this way, but command was like an old robe for him, so familiar that it just settled onto his shoulders without a crease.

‘Confirmed,’ said the pilot.

Josef switched the vox to broadcast through the squadron.

‘All units stand by,’ he said. ‘Mission parameter is to find out what has happened. Hostility levels unknown, but presume that there is something that will try to kill us.’

‘Confirmed,’ said Gald, from back in the crew compartment. Orsino had sent the cold-eyed proctor with Josef, and he fancied he could feel the man’s malevolence in the clipped reply.

‘Going dark,’ said the pilot. The wing lights on all three gunships went out.

The gunner in the door beside Josef swung the barrels of his rotor cannon around. They began to spin. The man’s helmet was a mass of vision and targeting enhancers. In the crew compartment behind him the arbitrators released their harnesses. Josef slipped his right hand through the worn leather loop on the haft of his hammer. He raised the aquila icon hanging around his neck with his left hand and kissed the cold brass.

‘You are of the priesthood,’ said a clear voice in his headset. He glanced around and met the glowing red gaze of Sister Superior Agata. The Battle Sister was fully armed, sword sheathed at her back, a bolter in her hands and her face hidden by a full helm.

‘I was,’ he shouted back.

‘But you talk like a soldier.’

‘That I am and was, sister. The blessed Emperor has seen fit to call me to many different duties.’

‘To serve the inquisitor?’

The gunship banked hard. Spires, domes and towers whipped past. They were dropping fast, snow a blurred wall all around them. He could see the lights glimmering through leaded windows only metres away.

‘Target zone in sight,’ said the pilot.

Josef grinned, gripping the grab rail beside the door as G-force slammed through the gunship.

‘Yes, and to do things like this.’

The stone walls of the monastery fell away, and the pilgrim drift opened beneath them. Fire glowed through the blizzard. Shacks and piled structures were blazing. Roads threaded through the orange glow in jagged lines. The wind was whipping tongues of flame from rooftop to rooftop. Here and there were patches of unburned buildings gathering coverings of snow.

‘The last location of the shrine guard units was half a mile along the main road from the gate,’ said Agata.

‘Sir, the fire is masking heat signatures,’ said the gunship pilot. ‘There could be hundreds of people down there or none at all.’

‘Only one way to find out. Take us in.’

The gunships turned, spiralling down, the wind yanking them like kites jerked on strings.

‘If the shrine guard were ambushed, whoever did that could be waiting for us,’ said Agata.

‘Then we will know they are there for certain.’

‘You don’t strike me as a reckless soul, preacher.’

‘And you don’t strike me as someone who counts the odds.’

The ground was coming up fast. The heat of the fires touched Josef’s face even through the cold wind. The gunner’s hands were steady on the rotor cannon, fingers on triggers.

‘Ready to drop, in three…’ said the pilot, flattening out the gunship’s flight in a roar of thrusters. The gunship was level for a second, then dropped. An open stretch of road lay between two rows of burning buildings. ‘Two…’ The gunship’s thrusters shrieked as they caught its descent and slammed it stationary two metres off the ground. ‘One…’

Josef shoved himself out of the opened door, and hit the ground. Agata dropped beside him. The gunship began to rise and pull away down the road as the arbitrators were still jumping from the open hatches. They hit the ground and dropped into firing crouches, bolters and combat shotguns trained on the buildings. Fire climbed the piled shacks. The snow underfoot was slush. Josef could feel the sweat already pouring off him under his robes and thermal bodyglove. The gunships rose into the blizzard above them, howling into the night.

Josef moved forwards. The other two squads had been dropped a hundred metres on either side of them on the road. The buildings and flame glow hid the monastery and stained the sky.

‘Contact,’ shouted Gald. ‘Fifty metres, right arc, single figure closing, status unclear.’

Josef turned. A figure was walking towards them from the shadow of a building that was still only partially ablaze.

‘Halt or you will be executed,’ called an arbitrator, voice amplified above the wind.

Josef could see that the figure was limping.

‘Halt,’ called Gald again.

‘Hold fire,’ called Josef. He was moving forwards as the figure stumbled and fell. He reached the figure as it tried to rise. It was a woman, thickset and wearing the remains of padded armour sewn with bronze panels. Her left arm was gone at the elbow, the left half of her face charred and clotted with black blood.

‘No, no, don’t move,’ said Josef, kneeling down beside her. This close he could hear the woman’s breath sawing and bubbling. The arbitrators had moved with him, forming a ring around them, guns pointed out into the flame-touched night. Josef saw the woman’s lips move and bent closer.

‘That’s one of the shrine guard,’ said Agata from behind him.

‘Where are the others?’ snapped Gald.

‘Quiet,’ said Josef. The woman was shaking her head. A bubble of pink foam formed on her lips.

‘Be calm,’ said Josef. ‘What happened here?’

‘Red…’ hissed the woman. She began to shake. ‘No… survivors. The drift… pilgrims…’ She was gasping now, panting as she fought for breath. ‘They… all…’ A mass of red foamed at her lips. She began to convulse. Her lips moved again. Josef leaned closer. Blood bubbles exploded on his cheeks.

‘What did she say?’ asked Gald.

Josef felt the blood drain from his face. He pushed himself up, the surge of adrenaline seeming to drag on him.

The woman gave a shudder and went still.

‘She said…’ Hearing the drum of his heart louder than the words. ‘They are all…are all pilgrims of hate now.’

Behind them, a fork of lightning punched up into the blizzard from the ground and tore a hovering gunship from the sky above them.

There was commotion around the Gate of Bells as the sound of an explosion rattled the doors.

‘Get back,’ growled one of the shrine guard, shoving a cluster of pilgrims filling the passage who had just made it through the doors before they closed. One of them turned slowly, rag-wrapped head rising.

The torch light caught a glint of metal. Of sharp metal.

The shrine guard saw, and was shouting as the knife point punched up under the chin of his helm.

The pilgrims were shrugging off their snow-covered cloaks. The woman who had stabbed the first guard stepped back, shedding rotting cloth like a skin. There was a hooked blade in her hand and jagged scars across her bald scalp.

A high ringing filled the air.

The pilgrims were all red now, all wrapped in tatters.

And the guards by the door were turning, shock on their faces and shouts on their lips.

The woman in red looked like she was grinning, showing all her teeth.

But it was not a smile. It was a cut that ran from edge to edge of the woman’s face.

And the shouts of surprise were all screams now.

Iacto could hear the noise as he approached the doors to the House of Concordance. Raised voices, and the crash of heavy objects striking the floor. Claudia was close behind him with two novitiates dragging carts of parchment rolls and leather-bound tomes. Two figures in black amour stepped into their path. His eyes met the wide mouths of levelled guns.

‘Identify yourselves. You have five seconds to comply,’ said one of the figures. Its voice was a machine-modulated growl echoing from its helm. He shrank back. He felt his guts lurch.

It’s true, he thought. This had to mean it was true. The Inquisition had come on the eve of night. He had not believed the news when Claudia had brought him the summons.

‘I am Abbot Iacto,’ he said. ‘I am head of the Sage Order of the Faithful. I was–’

A red lacquered servo-skull buzzed in from behind the armoured figures and gripped his face with metal callipers. He jerked back, but the skull gripped tighter.

‘Be still,’ growled one of the armoured figures. Iacto went still. The skull pulled itself to within a centimetre of his face. A pulse of red light flicked out from the skull’s sockets and bored into Iacto’s eyes. He bit back a yelp. The skull clattered and beeped, then released his head. The second skull must have done the same to Claudia, because she was blinking and had an expression that he knew meant she was only just holding her temper.

‘You are identified and logged,’ said one of the armoured figures. They stepped to the side. The doors to the House of Concordance opened. ‘You may enter.’

Iacto nodded, and turned to make sure the two novitiates followed with the records. He noticed half a dozen servo-skulls with articulated, steel legs scuttle off the stacks of scrolls and books like spiders.

‘Not them,’ said one of the guards. ‘Only you and your second may pass.’

Iacto looked around, a protest forming in his mouth. He met the mirrored visor of the nearest figure and the words faded.

‘Come,’ he said to Claudia, and gripped the handles of one of the carts.

Noise greeted them as they stepped through the doors. More figures in black armour were ripping the ancient pews from the floor and clearing a wide space of bare floor around the rostrum at the centre of the domed chamber. A tech-priest, in grey robes and a hunched machine frame, was manipulating dials and levers on one of a series of blocky machines. Thick cables snaked across the floor, and through open access grates. A smell of static and burning plastic touched his nose. A wave of heat washed over Iacto as the doors closed and locked behind him. More armoured figures stood at the room’s edge, slab-framed guns held across their chests. A dark-skinned man in a long trench coat watched Iacto and Claudia from a seat in the remaining pews. Next to him sat a decrepit-looking man wearing green robes over a frame so thin he could have passed for a mummified corpse.

A cluster of figures he knew stood at the centre of the cleared floor. The bishop stooped beneath her panoply of penitent chains. Next to her stood Archdeacon Sul, red-faced and sweating. The guards on the door had clearly denied his attendants entrance, because the archdeacon was carrying his huge ceremonial bone and iron mace in his own hands. As Iacto moved forwards he noticed Sul shift his weight, and blink as sweat ran down his face.

Opposite them stood a woman in black armour, her wrinkled face set beneath a towering headdress of silver and brass, an eagle-topped staff in her hands. She was saying something, and authority and control radiated from her expression even though Iacto could not hear the words.

The inquisitor, he thought, as the group noticed him and turned.

‘Abbot Iacto,’ said Bishop Xilita. ‘He is head of the Most Ancient Order of the Faithful, who keep the records and histories of this holy place. He has the plans you have asked for.’

Iacto was about to bow to the woman in the gilded headdress, when she gave a bark of laughter.

‘Not me,’ she said, and stepped back. Iacto saw that there was a fourth member of the group.

The man was young, with dark hair swept up into a topknot above a sharp face. The mark of the Inquisition gleamed on his red cuirass. The hilt of a sword projected from above his shoulders.

Iacto tried not to stare. He had never seen a member of the Inquisition before, and part of him was somehow disappointed. A soul who wielded the power of the Emperor Himself was just a man.

He began to kneel, mouth opening to give formal greeting.

‘Why do we need plans?’ blurted Sul. Iacto looked up, surprised. Sul’s hands were gripping and ungripping the mace, sweat rolling down his face. The inquisitor had turned to look at the archdeacon, and there was something in the way that neither gaze nor expression altered that made Iacto’s skin prickle with cold in the heat.

Iacto saw Sul swallow. He suddenly wanted to shout at the man to be quiet, to keep whatever fear was driving him to speak behind his teeth.

‘What do records matter?’ Sul was shaking. ‘We must pull out. The servants of darkness have come with the night. We must–’

‘Control yourself, sir,’ said the woman in the headdress. Now that he was closer he could see the symbols of judgement, law and authority on her staff, headdress and panoply.

Adeptus Arbites, he realised, a judge. He swallowed, and found his throat dry. Even without an inquisitor, this aged woman had the power to enforce Imperial Law without limit or oversight.

Sul’s jaw was still working, his eyes darting between hard faces. Iacto coughed and stepped forwards, pulling the first scroll from the cart next to him.

‘Honoured lords and most holy servants of our Emperor,’ said Iacto into the uneasy quiet. ‘This is the most recent plan of the complex. It was conducted one hundred and eleven years ago, but all but a few of the pertinent details are still accurate.’ He unrolled it between his hands, and looked up. Bishop Xilita shot him a look that he fancied held a note of relief at his intervention. Sul was blinking away sweat. His eyes were glazed, his pupils wide. ‘I brought other plans of the structure that can help create a more detailed picture.’ He chanced a look up at the judge and the inquisitor. ‘Where do your eminences require them?’ The judge was frowning, her gaze moving between Sul and Xilita. The inquisitor was looking directly at Iacto.

‘And the other records?’ said the inquisitor.

Iacto felt the smile he had been wearing behind his expression fade.

‘Here, my lord,’ he said, and gestured to Claudia to bring forward the other cart of ledgers and codices. ‘There are more, but these cover the areas you–’

‘Glavius-4-Rho,’ said the inquisitor, looking to the hunched tech-priest in grey as the gun on his shoulder rotated to fix on Iacto.

‘I await your command, lord, but please be aware…’ The tech-priest slotted a thick cable into the side of a block of machinery. Lights lit on its side, and a cone of static-filled green light blinked into the air. ‘The previous tasks that I am working to complete remain in a state between beginning and completion.’

‘Aid the abbot with compiling the information out of the records.’

‘As you will it,’ said the tech-priest.

Iacto bowed, then looked up. A question came to his lips, and despite all the decades that had taught him that silence was survival and curiosity dangerous, he heard his voice sound in the still air.

‘My lord inquisitor. We have brought records of the passing of days going back five centuries. What is it that you are looking for in the records?’

He wished he had not asked as soon as he had spoken.

The inquisitor took a step forward and lifted a leather-bound almanac from those heaped in the cart. He opened it. Dust puffed into the air. The inquisitor’s eyes moved down the page, and then up to Iacto. The abbot flinched back from the hard fire in that gaze.

‘For the hand marks of the divine,’ he said.

The burning wreckage of the gunship had not even touched the ground when a second lightning bolt struck the other gunship, and blew it apart.

Agata’s visor blinked black but the flashes exploded in her mind.

‘Down!’ she shouted. A blazing wing hit the building just in front of them. Fire and dust burst into the air. A blast wave ripped out. A chunk of rubble hit an arbitrator in the base of the back as he turned to run, and mashed his armour into his torso. Agata staggered, servos whirring in her armour as it fought to keep her standing.

In her mind the litany of the endurance lit like a flame.

Emperor, You are my strength…

Flame punched up into the blizzard as the remains of the second gunship hit the ground.

As You are eternal, so I am unbreakable…

Red flame and smoke curled into an anvil head above.

As You endure, so shall I bear the blows of the unclean…

The arbitrators were picking themselves up, but there were figures in the buildings around them now, figures who had pulled themselves out of the shadows.

Agata’s skin was prickling, and even through her helm she could taste ozone and sulphur.

She saw the preacher Josef trying to stand up from where he had fallen. He had his hammer in his hand, but there was blood on his face and he fell back as he tried to get his feet under him.

Agata fired. The first bolts tore the closing figures apart. She ran, firing with each stride, the bolter kicking in her grip. She shifted target as she moved, each movement requiring no thought, like a prayer recited until the words were written on the soul.

Flesh and bone tore apart. Blood salted the snow.

She was beside the preacher, her gauntlet under his arm.

‘Move!’ she roared, yanking his bulk up, servos shrieking, muscles tearing. He almost collapsed back. There were more figures coming from the burning dark. Agata fired one-handed, aiming low. The figures were shrieking, curses hissing from mouths that no longer had tongues. The bolt shells punched into the rubbled ground at their feet and exploded. Air bursts of shrapnel and stone splinters tore their legs apart, tumbling them to the ground, still. The round counter in her helm display flashed red. More figures came of out the swirl of snow and smoke.

She clamped the bolter to her thigh and drew the sword from her back in a single movement. The blade was heavy, designed to be wielded with two hands.

‘The Master of Mankind watches over me,’ she called.

The blade lit with a whip-crack of lightning.

Josef was blinking, head shaking as though trying to clear it of sleep, weight swaying as Agata supported him. A few arbitrators were standing.

The ragged figures charged.

‘As He is my shield…’

A wasted figure loomed out of the dark, nails hammered into its frostbitten torso, face a mask of blood and torn skin, its arms dragging a block of black metal on a heavy chain over its head to smash down into Agata.

‘…so am I the death of His enemies.’

And the sword cut through the falling snow.

‘Lord Covenant!’ Galvius-4-Rho’s shout was loud enough to make Iacto flinch, books tumbling out of his hands. The tech-priest straightened from one of the blocks of machinery that had been dragged into the chamber. Iacto looked up, realising only now just how tall the tech-priest was. Inquisitor Covenant was looking around from where he was talking with Xilita. Archdeacon Sul had been dismissed and was halfway to the door.

‘Lord Covenant, I should inform you that I have completed interface with the basic machine communication methods used in this complex/place of worship/ruin.’ The tech-priest paused and its hooded head twitched like a man trying to shake water from his ear. ‘It is low-grade but the signals are clear. They say that there are false pilgrims within the walls. They say that there is slaughter.’

‘Where?’ said the judge, striding forwards.

‘I said,’ stammered Sul from where he had stopped. ‘I said. This is it. It’s the end. We must get out. We–’

‘I have not created an integrated visualisation of the complex, but the signals list the following names/location designators – Gate of Bells, Western Cloister edge, the Bridge of Penance, Eastern Cloister edge, the twentieth catacomb level.’

Iacto had reached back and pulled a rolled map from the cart and spread it across the floor. It was inaccurate, made more by reverence than a belief in accuracy, but it showed the large areas of the monastery well enough. He jabbed at areas of the map. The others in the room were gathering around him.

‘Here, here, and here… blessing of saints, they are everywhere.’

His heart was a hammer beat in his chest. What was happening? For the first time in a long time he felt small, a cog turning in a machine rather than the hand which turned it.

‘We must go,’ yammered Sul, his voice high and breathless. ‘You have a ship. You can take us, we can–’

‘Get control of yourself,’ snapped Bishop Xilita.

‘The reports are increasing in intensity and frequency,’ said Glavius-4-Rho, his voice as level and calm as if he had been reading off power fluctuation data. ‘The phrase “red pilgrims” is becoming a notable feature of all communications, potentially reaching persistent-self-replicating-meme status.’

‘Visual reports?’ said the judge.

‘Minimal, Judge Orsino,’ said Glavius-4-Rho.

‘It must have been them,’ said Iacto. The charnel cistern in the Western Drift filled his mind. ‘In the Western Drift, it must have been them.’

Your god is dead…

‘What are you talking about, abbot?’ said Xilita.

‘There was an atrocity in the Western Drift. There were remains, butchered and mutilated.’

‘What is this?’ hissed the bishop, coming closer, her face taut with shock and rage.

Across the room he could see Sul looking at him, blinking, frozen.

Oh, you foolish creature, thought a part of Iacto, clear and still in the whirl of his thoughts. You did not tell her.

‘The shrine guard knew,’ he said, his voice cold and calm.

‘My lord, we have lost contact with Josef and the arbitrators sent to the western pilgrim enclave.’

‘What is happening?’ roared Xilita, rounding on Sul. ‘What have you been keeping from me?’

‘Nothing,’ he blustered. His face was red, his lips pale. ‘There was word of a sect forming in the pilgrims, followers of a prophet. It happens all the time. But–’

‘All units on deployment readiness,’ shouted Judge Orsino. ‘We should contain and lock down as much of the complex as we can, Covenant.’

‘Contain?’ spluttered Sul. ‘We need to get out! We need to–’

‘Archdeacon Sul,’ said Covenant, ‘you will place all of your shrine guards under Judge Orsino’s direct command.’

‘You have not seen, have not heard,’ growled Sul. ‘A hundred of my guards went into the Western Drift, where are they now? They are bones and ashes, as we shall be too.’

Iacto was standing, the map still in his hand. His eyes were fixed on Sul. He could read the terror curdling into panic and rage in the man’s eyes. Covenant and Orsino seemed very still. He was aware that the arbitrators at the edge of the room had shifted, gunstocks tucking into shoulders.

He has lost control, thought Iacto. He is not seeing; he is not thinking. He is like an animal caught in a river, thrashing as it drowns.

‘It’s the end, you see,’ growled Sul, and his hands were gripping the ceremonial mace now, fingers flexing. He took a step towards Xilita. ‘You can feel it. You know it, you stupid jumped-up peasant. Hunger, fire and blood. The lights in the sky. The ships leaving.’

He took another step. The mace raised in his hands. His eyes were wide and what sanity remained behind them had vanished. Xilita did not move. Iacto could see anger and shock on her face.

‘Night has come,’ gasped Sul, ‘and the only thing to do is to run before it drags us all down.’

He swung the mace up.

His chest exploded. The sound of the gunshot filled the space, shockingly loud, echoing on and on. Sul’s corpse blasted backwards and fell in a bloody tangle.

Iacto stared, unable to move. His ears were ringing, his limbs frozen.

Judge Orsino lowered her aim. A thread of smoke was curling from the barrel of the silver-and-gold-chased bolt pistol in her hand. The exo-bracing on her arm clicked as a set of recoil locks released with a whir of springs and cogs. Iacto realised he had not even seen her draw the weapon.

‘Sentence of execution reached and carried out.’

‘God-Emperor…’ gasped Josef. The pain washed through him, jolting up nerves with every movement. His feet were moving, crunching and sliding over snow-covered rubble. Bubbles of colour expanded and burst in his sight. He could see flames and the silhouettes of ruined buildings. Another jolt, another spear of pain up his back. ‘God-Emperor and all His tearful saints,’ he snarled.

‘You would add blasphemy to your troubles, priest?’ said a female voice from just next to his head. He blinked, twisting to try to see where the voice had come from. ‘No! Just keep walking. There will be more coming.’

He recognised the voice then: Agata. She was supporting him under his left shoulder, one power-armoured arm gripping him across the back, the other holding a bolt pistol. She had removed her helm. Snow was catching in her grey hair. Her face was a mask of effort.

‘I can walk,’ he said. ‘Let me walk.’

‘No,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘No, you can’t. You tried a half a kilometre back and did not make two steps.’ She glanced around, the movement precise. Her eyes moved between the shadows and the still-falling snow. ‘If we stop they have a better chance of gathering in force. We took two waves, but a third would be martyrdom.’

He took a breath and gritted his teeth. Something, or several things felt like they were broken and torn inside the right of his torso. It was sharp and clear though, what his old comrades in the naval armsmen squadrons called ‘alive for now’ pain.

He could see now. There were a handful of figures in black arbitrator armour moving with him, guns tracking the flame-lit lean-tos and scrap buildings around them. At a glance he could tell that most of them were injured. The moments before he had blacked out flicked back into his mind. He saw the witch lightning punch the gunships from the sky, saw the wreckage fall. He heard the dying woman in the bronze armour gasp her last warning.

‘Red pilgrims…’

‘Witches…’ he gasped. ‘They are inside the walls. We have to get back to the monastery.’

‘Not if we want to live,’ she said.

‘And every Sororitas that I have met always took those kinds of odds as a challenge.’

‘This is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of duty,’ she hissed.

‘You are not as direct as the others of the sisterhood I have known.’

‘Oh, I am,’ she said. ‘I am just old, and have been alone long enough to become weak to the indulgence of petty humour.’

She winced as they jolted over a fold in the ground. Josef could hear the woman’s pain in the quick breaths she took.

‘You are hurt,’ he said.

‘Not as badly as you, and we need to keep moving.’

Josef looked up and then turned his head to look behind him. The lights of the monastery’s windows glinted like weak stars through the falling snow.

‘We are going away from the monastery,’ he said.

‘I can see why someone so observant might be useful to the Inquisition,’ she said, gritting her teeth. ‘Most of those they left are strung out close to the monastery wall but there are other… things with them. They will expect us to try to get back, so we go in the other direction.’

‘And then what?’

‘We trust in the God-Emperor to gift us with another idea,’ she said.

‘You…’ gasped Iacto, his eyes on Sul’s mangled corpse and the blood flowing out across the tiled floor.

Iacto could not look away from the archdeacon’s blood-spattered face. The man’s eyes were still open, staring up at the domed ceiling without seeing.

‘Justice has been done,’ said Judge Orsino, her voice cold iron. ‘For endangerment of the body Imperium through cowardice and manifest incompetence, there are sentences within my power that are less kind.’

Xilita was staring at the corpse too.

‘This is the House of Concordance, a place of unity and peace in a holy place. This–’

‘Is a place of peace no longer,’ said Covenant. ‘This is now a place of war.’ He turned. ‘Every gate and door to the areas under attack is to be sealed immediately.’ He glanced at Orsino. ‘Send squads to hold the key points, main passages and access points.’

‘There are countless ways into every part of this place,’ said Iacto. Covenant ignored him.

‘My lord,’ said Xilita. ‘The abbot is correct. These… incidents are happening on the edge of the cloister districts, but the ways in and out go from down in the earth to bridges between towers. You can’t shut or close them all.’

Glavius-4-Rho bent and picked the plan of the monastery Iacto had used off the floor.

‘The statement made by the priest/monastic secondary-tier leader seems to be highly likely. The number of variables and resources at our disposal do not make for a pleasing correspondence.’

‘But there are places that people would have to come through if they came up or through other areas,’ said Iacto. ‘They are what you need to hold.’

Covenant did not answer for a second.

‘Show me.’ Covenant nodded at Glavius-4-Rho. Iacto turned to obey, only then releasing the breath he had been holding. ‘Then return to the records, abbot.’

Iacto paused, then bowed his head to hide his surprise. As he looked down his eye caught the dead gaze of Sul, staring up and seeing nothing while his life drained red onto the ground.

Ten

The world was black, edge to edge, and so far out that there was no depth to it. Enna turned her head, and then realised that she did not have a head to turn. She did not have a body either, just a viewpoint into black infinity.

She blinked and suddenly she could feel her limbs and skin.

‘Let’s start here, shall we?’

Enna’s gaze snapped around. A woman sat on a white ivory chair, what seemed like a pace away. The blank dark behind and beneath her made her seem like a portrait painted onto black glass. Her hair was copper red, and fell in a long, smooth spill across her left shoulder and down the side of a dress of green silk and black brocade. She smiled, her slim face barely creasing with the expression. There was something familiar about her, but Enna could not remember…

She could not remember anything. She knew her name. She knew who she was, but the rest was just a…

‘Yes,’ said the woman in green, ‘I had to tie off your memories, most of them anyway. Makes life simpler.’ She yawned as though fighting off a sudden wave of tiredness. ‘And… and simplicity is very much what we need in your case.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Enna.

The woman in green laughed dryly.

‘Funny,’ she said, without humour. ‘But then how are you to know. And of course the question is not who I am, but who are you, Enna Gyrid?’

‘I…’

‘Difficult for you to answer that at the moment, of course,’ said the woman in green. She rubbed her fingers over her eyes, and blinked as though to try and shake off another wave of fatigue. ‘I have done as much digging as I can. Killing you might have let me open up a couple of other portions of your consciousness, but only maybe, and as good an idea as death might be, my hands are tied.’

The woman in green’s eyes flicked to a point just over Enna’s shoulder. For the first time since the woman had appeared, Enna was aware of a presence just behind her. She turned her head.

‘No,’ said the woman in green, and the word snapped Enna’s gaze back around as though yanked by a chain. The woman gave a cold smile. ‘Look at me, Enna, just at me.’

Enna nodded, though she was not sure why. For an instant when she had turned her head she had caught sight of a figure in black robes in the corner of her eye, its face hidden in the shadow of its caul.

‘The thing is, Enna, that you are not as simple as you appear, and no I don’t mean to say you are stupid. You memories, your mind, your life, barely belong to you. Believe me that I know what I am talking about when I say that a lot of work has been done to you. Layers of false belief, grafted memories, cut-outs, recollection oubliettes. Your mind is a maze full of secrets and traps, and the chances are that I have barely scratched the surface. Impressive, really. Loathsome as well, but impressive. The fact that I didn’t spot it when I probed your mind… well that alone says something, doesn’t it?’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

The woman gave a tired nod, and then looked away.

‘You are a lie, Enna Gyrid,’ she said. ‘You are a lie given form and flesh. Someone took you, and willingly or not, re-sculpted your mind. They gave you a name. They gave you a past, and for everything they gave, they took more away. You are not who you believe yourself to be. You are not who we thought you were.’ The woman gave a cold chuckle. ‘Though you are not alone in that.’

The woman in green stood and suddenly was right in front of Enna’s face.

‘There are three of you,’ she said. ‘One is called Enna Gyrid and she believed that she was the loyal servant of an inquisitor called Idris. She is loyal, tough and a bit impulsive. She is the you that is hearing this, that is thinking that it can’t be true.’

The blackness behind the woman changed. Figures pulled into shape, like statues rising from tar. Enna could see a stone sarcophagi and a ring of figures in cloth masks, and her own face frozen in mid-scream before it was forced down beneath the surface.

‘Then there is the you that was made by the Renewed on Iago, the you that is just a membrane of coldness, a killer, a tool to greater ends.’

Enna was about to shrug when the memories poured into her. She saw the Conclave, and the Renewed coming out of the dust cloud with crystal blades. She saw Idris die. She saw Covenant, and his cadre of followers. She saw Iago, and the shrine of the dead Emperor in the warren beneath its surface. She saw Talicto, their quarry, long dead on his skeleton throne. She saw Idris standing in the flicker of a psychically trapped memory. And she saw herself looking down at a coin.

‘And then, last of all…’ The woman nodded over Enna’s shoulder. ‘There is the you that the other two hide.’

Enna felt herself turning even as she realised that she didn’t want to, that she wanted to do anything but see what had been standing there all this time.

A figure in black stood in front of her, head bowed, draped in black robes that were a cascade of black sand.

‘Your third self,’ said the woman in green.

‘What you are saying means nothing to me,’ said Enna, still staring at the grains of black sand flow in the folds of robes. ‘I don’t even know who you are.’

‘No, you don’t, but I thought it might be better if you knew the truth before I gave you back some of the context.’ She paused, then shivered, the green silk rustling. ‘I am not kind, but I try to avoid cruelty.’

Lightning crackled through the air, splitting the dark like a knife sawed through cloth. A window formed in mid-air, edged by white sparks. She saw a chamber filled with vibrating machines, and clouds of frost and steam. A woman in a red bodyglove and hessian shift knelt in front of a metal casket, sword clasped in her hands. Nearer to Enna’s viewpoint floated a figure with withered limbs, its head ringed by bulbous, chrome machinery.

‘Mylasa,’ said Enna, suddenly knowing who the woman in green must be. Then she looked at the metal casket and saw her own face beyond the frosted view slit.

She began to shake. She could feel liquid pouring into her lungs, fire filling her thoughts, the cold of a silver coin in her hand.

Her voice was shaking with terror.

‘Mylasa, help me.’

‘No,’ said Mylasa. ‘As I said, I am sorry, but I am here for the truth, and whatever that requires will be done.’

‘But I am not a heretic. I have served the Emperor. I am Enna Gyrid. I am…’

Mylasa shook her head.

‘Come and see for yourself,’ she said.

‘Go,’ whispered Ninkurra, and loosed the hawk from her wrist. The bird beat its wings and glided away into the dark of the girder-space. In her mind the hawk’s augmented vison showed her a world of grey edges and black voids. The second hawk shifted on her shoulder, its claws digging into the mesh plates woven into her bodyglove. Around her the dark of the deep hull extended, soft and black and silent.

In her ear the voice of the von Castellan data file whispered like a ghost.

‘…the von Castellan dynasty originates from the planet of Xarxis Plethis, Valrio Subsector, Ghastshrine Sector, Segmentum Tempestus. The brigantine Dionysia is currently the only vessel under the dynasty’s control…’

The cavern that they had landed the gunship in had been well sealed, but she had found her way out eventually: a small pressure hatch into a maintenance duct, and then a long crawl dragging her vacuum casket behind her. She did not think she had tripped any security measures, or if she had, she had yet to see a response. Even a small ship like this was still vast, and you could not guard every inch of it. The seneschal of the von Castellans was clever though, and subtle, at least according to the files, so it was best to assume nothing.

Once she had got out of the sealed section, gravity and air had returned. She had stripped her void suit and packed it into the vacuum casket. She had hung a cameleoline-woven cloak over her mesh bodyglove, and strapped her collapsed sword to the small of her back. Then she had strapped the pistols, data gauntlet and pouches of small equipment in place. Last had been an infra-monocle, which turned half her sight into monochrome green dark-sight, or the coloured smudges of heat vision as she required. Her hawks woken, she had stashed the vacuum caskets in a crawl space. A tiny micro-transmitter would lead her back to it when the time came. If the time came. She had yet to work out a proper method of attack, let alone an escape plan for when it was done. The first step, though, was to find out where she was and then build steps to the target.

Standing in the dark, watching the landscape of machines and pipes glide past her hawk’s eyes, she wondered how long it had been since a living human had trod these decks. Years? Decades? More?

‘…at the height of its prosperity, the dynasty controlled a fleet of six vessels…’

The hawk slid though a gap in a mass of pipes. A black gulf opened beneath. It wheeled, its wings catching an updraught. A shaft soared upwards towards a distant light. She willed the bird to settle on a projecting strut.

‘…much of the success of the dynasty rests not in the hands of the titular bearer of the warrant of trade, Cleander von Castellan…’

Ninkurra paused for a second, the beginning of her next steps forming in her thoughts. She did not have the ability or time to tease information from a starship’s data systems. No, she would have to rely on older, simpler, more human means of finding her prey.

‘…but in the surviving younger sister, Viola von Castellan, known to many as the Mistress of Threads, lies much of the dynasty’s remaining power…’

She would begin at the core of things, at the centre of the web.

‘How do you do it?’ asked Bal, from where he waited by her study door.

Viola paused in scrolling through the data feed, and looked up.

‘Keep going, I mean. How do you keep processing and holding on to it all?’

‘By not being interrupted,’ she said, and looked back at the glowing flow of numbers and glyphs. Static and distortion filled the cascade – the distortions to vox and communication systems had been getting worse and worse since the storm had cut them off from the surface of Dominicus Prime, as though its winds were billowing inside the machines themselves.

She blinked, and the flow had changed again. To almost anybody it would look like a screed of random symbols, some not even part of any recognisable Imperial dialect. It was the trade cant of her dynasty, and to her it was as familiar as speech. At least it normally was. For a second when she had looked back it had seemed like nothing, like static on a blown pict screen.

She put the data-slate down on the desk.

‘How did you get so good with guns?’ she asked. Bal looked around, his surprise at the question clear on his face. She shrugged. ‘Well?’

‘I didn’t have much choice,’ he said. ‘In the stack archipelagos, you don’t get past walking without knowing how to fight. Sometimes you don’t even get that chance. But I was better than most, useful even, and that had value. So when the burn-famine came my family sold me to the Death Brokers. They did the rest. Day in, day out, hour after hour, drill and fire, and drill, and then testing and more. That’s the way they do it, until the guns are more real to you than your empty hands.’

Viola nodded.

‘And it worked?’

Bal grinned and raised his hands, fingers open.

‘These feel as awkward as hell right now.’

She smiled, and rubbed her eyes with her palms.

‘When I was six I was given to the family savants. I was the third-born, and that was what happened to children fortunate enough to be two steps away from inheritance. Christina was the heir, Cleander the spare. He was destined for the Navy officer corps at Bakka. They already knew this, and what my role would be. I just didn’t get told until I was six. That is when the brain is developed enough to be… trained, but still growing. So that’s when they started. Cognitive conditioning, day in, day out.’

She felt her mouth twitch into a cold smile, but the sound that came with it was a snort.

‘It started with rhymes, children’s rhymes, or that’s what they seemed like anyway – tiny, tiny spider climbed up the water spout… On and on in particular rhythms and tones, sometimes they would change just a word, or the timing of a breath in speaking it, on and on – dec, sire, nova, sire, oct, sire…

‘Then there were the games. Patterns and numbers, and the rules never exactly the same twice. Every minute of every day was like that. Even sleep was timed to the second. When I got to play, it was always a game they chose and the game was always a lesson. Things started to happen.

‘One day I walked down the corridors that held the ashes of our ancestors, all of them going back to before the Age of Apostasy. Each sepulchre listed the span of their life and the deeds they had done in service of our bloodline. It was a long walk, and I did not think I did more than glance at each of the plaques. But afterwards… afterwards one of my tutors started one of the rhymes, and suddenly it was just pouring out of me, every name, every date. Zartha von Castellan, 672.M38 to 792.M38 – instituted the Treaty of Nevre with the Hierarchs of Sulpon… Castia von Castellan, 710.M38 to 801.M38 – commanded Battlegroup Jove at the Battle of Draco Gulf… even now it’s still there, all of it, written in the fabric of my nerves.’

She realised that she had placed her hands on the top of the desk, flat, palms down, like a child waiting for a class. She glanced up at Bal, but the bodyguard was just looking at her and frowning.

She shrugged.

‘They did not start on the surgery or the alchemistry until I was twelve, I think. That was when things really started to become serious. The nursery rhymes and games stopped but the thought patterns they hid continued. The demands and the methods became more intense. Have you heard what a data-deluge is?’

To her surprise, Bal nodded.

‘Some of the high scribes on Serapho used to do that – open themselves up to a load of information until they almost dropped dead.’

‘Until all of the mind’s capacity to remember and process is exceeded is more accurate.’ She let out a breath and leaned her head back. The neon ghosts of trade cant symbols rolled over the blackness inside her eyelids. ‘It is… like being drowned. They give you just long enough to come up for air and then they put you back under, again and again.’ She opened her eyes, looking at the document- and data-slate-strewn desk, but seeing the sunlit tower tutor cells and the holo-induction machines sitting on the white floors. ‘And all the time I had to do mental gymnastics – simultaneous pattern and logic analysis, memory sieving and scraping. And more and more information poured in. They beamed most of it into my eyes just below the rate of cognitive comprehension. It wasn’t until I was of age that they took my eye.’

She brought her finger to her cheek and pulled down the eyelid so that he could see the wet chrome wire bundles in the socket.

‘Near flawless, and lets me see the dynasty’s lifeblood of ones and zeroes flow, grow, or run out, all without closing my eyes. Most of the savants used mind interface sockets to access data, but that would have been too uncouth for one of the bloodline, and anyway I didn’t need it. In the end it turned out that I was quite the star student. Father and mother were pleased…’

She was staring at the desk again, at the auto quills and scrolls.

…tiny, tiny spider…

‘And you?’ said Bal.

‘Hmm?’ She blinked and looked up, and blinked again. Suddenly she felt very tired. ‘Oh, I was… I don’t know. I was what I needed to be – the keystone of a dynasty.’

‘Isn’t that the Duke von Castellan?’

She laughed then.

‘You have met my brother, haven’t you?’

He nodded.

‘And now?’ he asked. ‘What are you now?’

‘I…’ she said and stood. ‘I am tired.’

‘You have actually reached the point where you are going to want to sleep – I never thought I would see the day. You must be telling the truth.’

‘And you are too familiar and ask too many questions for a household lifeward.’

He shrugged.

‘I have always thought that most people like to answer the questions that they don’t often get asked.’

‘A philosopher and a killer, no wonder you caught Kynortas’ eye. You are just his type.’

The grin again.

‘I will leave you to rest, mistress, and am pleased that you didn’t have me whipped for asking.’ He turned towards the door, then stopped his hand, close to the release. ‘You know, when I was learning gunplay, at first I wished every day that someone would come and take me away, take the gun out of my hand and make me something else, somebody else…’

He paused, frowned, mouth half-open to speak.

‘And here you are,’ she said.

‘And here I am,’ he smiled. ‘But you know, now I can’t think of who else I would rather be.’ He keyed the door release and stepped out into the corridor beyond. ‘Good night, mistress.’

‘Goodnight,’ she said, as the door shut and sealed after him.

AND FIND THE GATES TO HOPE CLOSED

Acia folded back into the darkness of a statue niche as the shrine guard passed. Candlelight shone from the cheeks of their face plates. She had seen them once before when they had come into the drift to find a man who had stolen an icon from one of the shrines inside the cloisters. They had broken his left hand, and left him screaming. Ever since then she had thought of their masks as shouting, not crying.

She had decided to go back to the drift two days ago, but it had taken her this long to work her way through the cloister levels to the Gate of Bells. Two days of silence and small movements, of taking water from where it leaked down walls, and eking out a piece of bread she had taken from a plate left in a deserted refectory.

She held her breath, waiting for them to pass, listening to the clink of their iron truncheons against the bronze squares sewn onto their jackets. They were everywhere now, walking the passages and standing guard on doors. They were looking for her, because of what had happened in the Palace of Pillars, because of that silent scream that had reduced the flesh of her grandfather’s killers to dripping blood and tatters – she knew it without needing to be certain.

‘Witch…’ The word breathed through the monastery in a thousand whispers. She had heard it spoken by a pair of penitents as they walked within feet of her. There were hunters in the complex and people had been burned in the drifts. Every eye was looking for her and every hand was an enemy. It would be no safer out in the drifts, but that was not why she had come to the Gate of Bells.

She wanted to go home.

She leaned slightly out of the statue’s shadow and glanced in the direction of the Gate of Bells. It was open. She could see the sky beyond the arch, and the light of a midday sun.

Home… Her grandfather was gone, but if she could just get home it would be all right.

One of the shrine guards twitched their head towards her as they passed. Acia flinched back, but the guard was slowing, turning aside from the column and reaching for the rod of iron hanging from its belt. She felt herself tremble, as the helm’s black eye holes reached into the shadow that held her.

‘You, back into ranks,’ called a voice from amongst the shrine guards, and the guard stopped. ‘Yes, you.’ And the guard stepped away and joined the march to the open door. Acia waited until the last of them had passed before looking out again.

She edged forward out of the shadow. A bell tolled above the gate, its sound harsh and loud in the corridor. She wondered why they had sounded one of the bells. They never did that.

‘By order of the archdeacon the doors are to be sealed,’ called one of the guards. ‘Let it be done.’

The key-keepers bowed their heads and began to drag the doors shut.

Acia was moving forwards before she could stop herself, running towards the narrowing slit of daylight. She must have cried out because one of the guards turned, and there were no shadows to hide her now.

‘Halt!’ came a shout.

She kept running. The door was almost closed, the daylight drawing a thinning line across the stone floor.

And now the other guards were turning.

Please! she screamed in her head. Please!

The doors shut with a dull boom.

‘No!’ she shouted, still not seeing the wall of shrine guards. Then a whip cracked out, and pain exploded in her legs, and she was on the floor gasping, and the masked guards were all around, reaching for her, and she could hear the word that breathed through their thoughts.

Witch…

Witch…

Witch…

She tried to push herself up but a boot lashed into her skull, and the world…

Juddered out of time. The guards were moving, but it was like a book she had once seen, where you flicked the pages and a man ran from a hunting beast across the top of the sheets of paper. She did not stop to think what was happening, but pushed herself up and began to run, shoving and ducking past the guards, and sprinting away from the doors. Above her, the candles burned like suns in their iron stands.

–and then she was not running down a passage under the light of candles. She was running across a desert. Clouds of rust-red dust billowed around her and laughter chuckled with the sound of wind singing in a dried skull’s teeth. She looked behind. Four silent shadows loped through the dust swirl behind her.

‘Weakness… weakness…’ they hissed in a voice of running sand. ‘You cannot last…’

‘Run you down…’

‘Tear you from your false throne…’

‘Rot your soul to ash…’

‘Eat your screams…’

‘Give you to the fire’s hunger…’

And she knew they were right, that it was only a matter of time and exhaustion…

–and the edge of a stone caught her toe. She stumbled. Her hands slammed into the stone of the passageway. She gasped, but did not look back at the masked guards or the closed doors. She needed to keep running.

She was squeezing past a statue plinth and into the crawl space beyond, as the world slammed back into motion. The screams followed her as she scrambled down into the dark.

Eleven

A tide of figures in rags flooded into the cloister of the Brothers and Sisters of the Emperor’s Word. They found most of the order in the refectory at tables laid for the Feast of Last Light. The Pure and True Order of the Key died at prayer, their pleas falling silent as their blood soaked the blue tiles of their chapels. The Sisters of the Solar Light fought, pulling rusted swords from the sepulchres of their long-dead founders. They killed many of the ragged throng who poured into their halls, but not enough.

Across the lower reaches of the monastery a few pockets managed to barricade themselves behind doors, or shut themselves off from the red tide. That was when the first fires were set. Slick with blood, and with the fingers, tongues and ears of the dead hanging off them, the pilgrims left those they could not butcher to the flames.

Beneath the wide Arch of the Nine Sons, the rising tide met their first true resistance. Forty shrine guard, marshalled by an Adeptus Arbites proctor, met the first pilgrims to try to force their way through. Mismatched stubbers and black-powder pistols fired ragged volleys into the charging horde. Dozens fell. Those behind them did not pause, but scrabbled over the dead to die in turn. For a while it looked as though the arch might hold. Then a thing the size of a grox swayed and wobbled to the front of the throng. Bullets plucked at its red shroud. It cried out in dozens of voices, each one a shriek of pain and anger. Some of the shrine guard ran then. Those that stood and fired lived long enough to see the bloated thing stop and raise a tiny head on a long neck. It breathed out. Black flies filled the air and poured over the defenders, shredding them with a million bites as the bloated host of the swarm deflated with a final cry.

On they came, the denied, hopeless and forsaken; and if there was any space for mercy in their hearts they showed none.

‘Hold,’ said Covenant. Behind him the arbitrator squads dropped into low firing positions. Koleg saw the wind speed increase in the corner of his visor. Snow was spiralling across the sky, around the bridge and between the towers rising above them. There was no balustrade to the bridge, just a sheer drop down to the lower roofs and tower tops of the monastery. A foot of snow had already covered the stone slabs of the bridge. Koleg holstered his macrostubber pistol and considered the view in front of them.

It was called the Bridge of Absolution, and it linked a bastion of the Eastern Cloister to a tower that rose from the ruined heap of the Burnt Shrines. According to the lean-faced abbot and his hard-eyed assistant, this bridge would allow access to the main bulk of the inner cloisters without going through the miles of corridors and doors of the monastery itself. Doors could be sealed at the bridge’s end, but doors could be broken, and Covenant had decided to move himself and three squads of arbitrators to it while Orsino oversaw the securing of other key points, staunching the mass of pilgrims that had begun to flow into the cloisters from the drift. The reason was simple, and Koleg knew it with a soldier’s clarity and without needing to be told. The inquisitor wanted to see this enemy, to face it down and break some of its momentum. That was why he had ordered Koleg to come with him. Because this was going to be about killing.

Koleg pulled his grenade launcher around from the small of his back. The wind speed would make using it difficult.

‘Negative on targets by movement, heat and light, my lord,’ said one of the arbitrators.

‘They will come,’ said Covenant. Koleg saw his master look down at a small device of brass and spinning crystal, then he replaced it in a pouch and nodded to the dark end of the bridge beyond the falling snow.

‘Movement, three hundred metres front!’ Koleg’s visor zoomed in. He saw it then – a staggering shape, hunched and blurred by rags.

Koleg clicked his visor to infra-sight. The world became blue with cold. He looked at the figures walking towards them on the far side of the bridge. For a second they were cold blue smudges against the black.

‘Confirm hostiles,’ said one of the arbitrators.

The advancing figures flared white with heat. Koleg clicked back to normal vison. The falling snow froze in mid-air. Red rags burned on the nearest figures. Ash spiralled up to the night sky. The bodies beneath were hunger-thin, stitched and cut with scar patterns. Hooks had been bound in place of their hands and their lower jaws torn free of their heads. The first steps they took were unsteady on the iced stone, but then they changed. Heat poured out of their wounds and eyes. Flesh charred and elongated, growing even as it cooked. Horns and quills and hooves pushed through their skin. They blurred with speed, limbs stretching as they uncoiled into a run.

‘Hostiles confirmed,’ called Koleg, and fired. The grenade punched out of the launcher with a dull thump. The wind yanked it but Koleg had accounted for its shear. The grenade struck the bridge just in front of the charging creatures. Splintered stone and shrapnel flew out, then slowed, spinning in the dark like snow caught in a breeze.

The arbitrators opened fire. Shots ripped out, overlapping, hammering into the creatures as they came forwards.

The clouds of shot burned as they flew. Hundreds of steel spheres became a glowing cloud. The creatures did not slow down, but ran on. Molten shot punched into them.

Koleg switched the setting on his grenade launcher and pulled the trigger twice. The two grav-bombs hit the two closest creatures with enough force to make them stagger. The compact gravitic generators in each grenade triggered a second later. The creatures slammed down into the bridge. Bones broke. Burning flesh was crushed to ash and jellied meat. The creatures behind them dropped to all fours and scuttled over the side of the bridge. And behind them, more were coming.

Even inside his mask, Koleg could taste ash and burning hair.

‘Forward,’ said Covenant, and stepped to meet the burning creatures. He had drawn his sword, and its field lit with a growl of static. Snowflakes exploded to steam as they kissed the power field. The nearest creature leaped at them. In shape, it looked like a canid fused with an unfeathered bird, back jointed, long limbed, blood drooling from the maw that had split wide down its chest. The features of its human host remained only in the terror of its eyes as it leapt towards Covenant, hooked arms raised.

The psycannon on Covenant’s shoulder rotated up and fired. Its round punched into the creature’s chest and exploded. Sacred silver and grave-dust gathered from executed witches ripped through its flesh. The thing screamed as it fell, and Covenant was moving, sword rising to take the next one as it leapt.

Koleg swung his grenade launcher onto his back and drew his macrostubber pistol. He pulled the trigger as the gun came free. Micro-rounds, each no wider than a needle, hosed into the horde of creatures rolling up the bridge. Limbs and torsos came apart. Shotgun fire was lashing into them from the arbitrators. The creatures shrieked, and the tide of them parted over the edge of the bridge as they scuttled onto its underside like spiders.

‘Look to the flanks!’ shouted one of the arbitrators.

Covenant paused as more creatures swarmed into the space left by his latest kill. Cords of ghost light gathered around his temples. A thing with a mouth as wide as its chest jumped forward, black teeth sharp in a hungry smile. A wall of invisible force slammed out from Covenant. The creature flew backwards, limbs and skin torn off as it struck those behind it. The wall of telekinetic force ripped onwards, throwing bodies into the air and tearing others to red shreds.

Koleg moved up to Covenant’s side, firing without pause. The barrel of his pistol was glowing. Covenant struck a creature with an overhead blow, and split it from head to crotch in a shriek of lightning. The psycannon on his shoulder spun and fired behind them as the first creature came up over the side of the bridge. The psy-active round ripped its elongating skull off and sent its corpse pitching back into the dark drop, down to the roofs and spires below.

The macrostubber clicked empty in Koleg’s hand. Limbs and torn flesh carpeted the stone in front of them. A thing with bloody stumps for legs thrashed a clawed hand at him from a pile of flesh. He kicked it back, stripped the glowing barrel and empty cylinder-mag from the pistol, drew replacements from his harness, snapped them into place and kept shooting.

A fresh wave of figures was surging up the bridge. Red rags hung from them, and blades glinted in their hands. The creatures were clawing up onto the bridge around and behind Covenant’s arbitrators.

An arbitrator spun his shotgun around, as a thing that had been human and was now a mass of tentacles and stingers flopped over the parapet next to him. He fired as a barbed tentacle whipped out and smashed through his visor in a spray of mirror glass and bone. Koleg stitched a line through the thing’s main mass. Mouths opened in its skin, yellow human teeth around red tongues, and howled in human voices. Covenant turned, spun his sword so that it was point-down in his hands, and plunged it into one of the open mouths. The creature split, tentacles thrashing as Covenant ripped the sword free and kicked it off the edge.

Koleg sawed macrostubber fire across the figures charging up the slope of the bridge. Shot blasts ripped through them. Inside his skull he watched the rag-wrapped people fall. He saw their faces in the muzzle flare, men and women, strong and weak. He heard the hate pouring from their lips, and the blood spray up, black in the flash and roar. He noted how old some were, how weak some seemed, how their eyes were still human behind their masks and still-bloody scars. He saw all this, and felt nothing.

‘More are coming, lord,’ he called to Covenant.

The inquisitor paused, but did not look at the horde. He was lifting the device from the pouch at his waist again, and it caught the battle’s light. The psycannon on his shoulder twitched, spitting rounds into warped creatures and the charging throng alike. Koleg glanced at his master as he reloaded again, then looked closer at the brass instrument he held.

Spheres of crystal were spinning at its heart, and Koleg could see light gathering and scattering as they whirled faster and faster. Covenant’s eyes were fixed on it, staring, while around him fire and blood touched the cold dark.

Koleg flicked his attention back to the space beyond the muzzle of his gun as one of the arbitrators shouted.

The crowd of figures swarming up the bridge was draining back, leaving the dead and dying like flotsam on a shore. As swift as smoke blown by the wind, they were gone. The firing slowed and then ceased.

‘What is this?’ hissed one of the arbitrators.

The wind breathed into the silence.

The arbitrators began to reload and pull their casualties back. Covenant was still looking at the brass disc in his right hand, his sword – still skinned with lightning – held low in his other hand.

‘Lord,’ called one of the arbitrators, ‘are we withdrawing?’

Covenant looked up, blinked once, and replaced the brass disc in a pouch. The sword’s power field snapped off, and he sheathed it over his shoulder as he turned and began to stride back towards the end of the bridge that connected to the inner cloisters.

‘Remain,’ he said to the arbitrators, as he moved through them. ‘Hold until you can’t, and then pull back to the inner door.’

Koleg followed him, falling in at his side in silence.

Covenant looked at him, face set.

‘It is coming,’ he said.

‘Down!’ hissed Agata. Josef gritted his teeth as fresh pain jolted through him when he dropped behind a pile of snow-covered debris. Gald and the two arbitrators that were still with them flattened themselves into shadows amongst the tangle of ramshackle buildings. They had lost the other two in the time that it had taken them to get from the attack site to… wherever they were. Somewhere deep in the Western Drift, he knew that much, but he had slipped out of consciousness a few times. The second time he had dimmed out he had woken to find one of the arbitrators gone. He had asked what had happened.

‘Wounds,’ Agata had said, and left it at that. She had talked less and less the further they went. He had walked using his hammer or one of the arbitrators for support, but then the pain would begin to rise, and Agata would loop herself under his arm and drag him on.

Now, slumped in the deepening snow, he mouthed a prayer to the living god he had tried to serve as best he could.

Agata put a hand on his shoulder. He lifted his head and looked in the direction she pointed. A shape was moving across the open space of a snow-choked road in front of them. It was very tall, and thin, its features hidden in a swathe of torn cloth. It reminded him of a street festival he had once seen on Scorboza. It had been the Day of Rising in the mortuary cites, and pairs of acrobats had stalked the streets on stilts, one balancing on the shoulders of the other, wearing costumes of dead saints with fireworks for eyes. The way they moved and swayed filled his mind as he watched the tall figure pause in the middle of the road. It turned its head. The shadow beneath its hood passed over where Josef and Agata lay. For a moment he felt heat prickle his skin, and then the thing’s gaze turned away and it swayed off down the street.

‘Abomination,’ breathed Agata.

‘Red pilgrims…’ said Josef. They had seen fewer and fewer of the red-swathed cultists as they had gone deeper into the drift, but then they had seen no sign of anyone else. Anyone living at least. The dead were there in abundance.

They found the first plague house off a rough square amongst the warren of alleys. The bodies had been heaped in a single structure, stacked like wood for winter. Promethium slurry had been poured over them. They were going to burn them once there were enough. The bodies had been thin, and all of them had red welts and blisters on one of their hands, as though they had dipped their hand in whatever had killed them.

They had found some evidence of what had happened to the rest in some of the shacks they had looked in. Only the wind and cold stopped the reek filling the air like a fog.

‘Have you wondered…’ began Josef. Agata had begun to rise, and paused.

‘What? We need to move – that thing might come back and there might be others. We need to start arcing around towards the monastery.’

Josef shook his head.

‘How long has there been plague in this place?’

‘Weeks maybe,’ she hissed. ‘Food has been scarce and the orders have been coming out less to minister to the pilgrims. Disease followed in those footsteps.’

‘Enough to kill all those that this uprising did not?’

Agata paused, then shook her head. He noticed that a fresh runnel of blood had seeped from a ragged hole in the knee joint of her armour.

‘There is no time to–’

‘Think, sister. This is a malefic uprising, one of the swiftest I have seen. If the rest of those in this drift did not die of the plague or hunger or cold, then they must be with them. They are all red pilgrims now.’

‘But how could so many fall so quickly?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s a good question, don’t you think?’

He watched Agata. The wrinkles and lines on her face deepened as she closed her eyes for a second. He saw the muscle tense in her jaw.

‘You have an idea of how to find an answer?’

‘Yes, I think we stop running and start hunting.’

‘You think that it is out here still?’

He pulled himself up so that he could point in the direction that the tall stalker in red had gone.

‘I don’t know. I doubt, though, that thing is simply wandering. I think it is guarding something. Something close.’

‘And so…’

‘We follow it,’ he said, pushing himself up with his hammer’s haft. He closed his eyes for an instant and breathed to stop himself swaying, and then took a step through the snow. ‘We follow it…’

‘Water.’ Iacto looked up from the sheaf of parchments he had spread across an upturned pew that had been used as a table. ‘Yes, you, abbot, Intracto, or whatever they said you were called. I need water, yes? You have enough grasp of both language and thirst to comprehend me.’

The old man in green robes had been sitting on a wooden bench five paces behind where Iacto was working. He had been there ever since the abbot had entered the room, but had not moved or spoken. He had just sat there, head bowed, shivering to whatever dreams passed through his sleep, claw-like hands hugging his robe to his chest.

Iacto straightened, and looked around. Apart from Glavius-4-Rho, and the statue-like presence of four arbitrators, he was alone. All of the others had gone or withdrawn to other tasks. One of the arbitrators had dragged Sul’s body away, and sluiced the blood with snowmelt-water. Pink-tinted ice crystals still floated on the puddle. He had sent Claudia to coordinate the search of the archives for the type of information the inquisitor wanted. He could have gone himself, but he had decided to stay in the House of Concordance.

There were two reasons for that choice. First was the simple fact that his instinct said that this was the safest place for him to be at that moment. The second was that he had begun to suspect that there were opportunities lurking just under the surface of what was happening. When he had stopped being shocked he had started to see that, for all the horror and terror of what was happening, there were two possibilities. Either everything was going to end, or something was going to survive, but regardless of which, there was going to be chaos. And in chaos there was a chance to take what before might have been out of reach.

He just needed to wait, and discover how to seize it.

‘Are you an idiot?’ asked the old man in green. ‘Water. Now. It’s a very simple request and should not tax your faculties.’

Iacto blinked, then nodded. There was a copper ewer of water on the floor nearby and he poured a half measure into a wooden cup. The old man took it from him, sniffed, and thrust it back.

‘What do you think I am, some dying old fossil who can only sip a thimble’s worth? Full cup, man! Full cup!’

Iacto bit back the retort on his tongue, and went to fill the cup.

‘My infinite thanks and blessings,’ said the old man, slurping the water down.

‘You are an astropath,’ said Iacto, watching drops of water fall from the old man’s mouth to spot the green silk of his robes.

‘Observant as well as stupid, how novel.’

Iacto was about to stop himself from shaking his head, then he remembered that the old man was blind.

‘No need to spare my delicate feelings – I don’t need to see you shake your head to see you shake your head.’ The astropath smacked his lips as he drained the last of the water. ‘I am a witch, remember, with powers beyond that which the mundane can comprehend.’

The old man smiled. Then he coughed, swayed, and vomited a mixture of water, bile and blood onto the floor. Iacto flinched forward, but the old man raised a hand.

‘No, please spare me whatever passes for your sympathy.’ He coughed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘This place… this place. It’s still growing, Emperor of all, but we can’t wait much longer.’

Iacto frowned.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Matters beyond your understanding.’

‘Is it something about the uprising, about these red pilgrims?’

The old man chuckled.

‘Oh great glory, you have no idea. I just wish that he could have left me out of it.’

An idea formed in Iacto’s mind. He glanced around, but the arbitrators had not moved. He looked back at the stacks of parchment and ledgers. He looked back at the astropath, and the idea became a question.

‘Astropaths send and receive messages across space. It makes sense that a man of such power would want to send and receive word of…’

‘Ah,’ said the old man, looking uncomfortable. ‘Not as stupid as you seem, then. My mistake.’

‘Astropaths…’ said Iacto, suddenly cold as the last pieces of realisation dropped into place. ‘There is no astropath in the monastery. That is why the inquisitor brought you, because there is no means of getting word out – there is no way that anyone could know what is happening.’

He looked at the old man, but the old astropath did not move or reply.

‘But he came here and he is fighting and sending others to fight. Why? Why did he come with so many troops if he did not know that this uprising was happening?’

He had gone still, his mind dancing as he saw pieces of the situation afresh. He had not been thinking or seeing clearly before, there had been too much shock, too much fear, but now the truth seemed obvious.

‘He came here for something else…’ he said to himself. ‘The only reason he is fighting what is happening is to buy time, while he finds it.’

‘You know, ideas and questions around the Inquisition tend to be bad ideas.’ The old man held out the empty water cup. ‘Please could you pour me some more water?’

Iacto barely heard; he was moving towards one of the exits from the chamber. The arbitrator guarding it pulled it open and covered the area outside. He had been right, but not in the way he had expected – times of greatest chaos were times of greatest opportunity.

Behind him, as he hurried into the candlelit gloom of the cloister passages, he heard the old man’s voice rise.

‘What about my water? I even said please.’

Memnon stopped in the lee of a half-collapsed wall and looked up at the northern face of the monastery. Its windows were pale specks behind the falling snow. Geddon paused at his side, rotating her head like a dog. The machines haloing her hissed and beeped.

‘High, high levels of etheric fracturing at play. The Neverborn are walking the world.’ The towering form of Cinis shifted beside them. He alone had not taken the opportunity to get out of the wind.

‘Is an alignment forming?’ asked Memnon.

‘I cannot tell. The data from atmospherics to etherics is… fluctuating. I… I am, though, detecting vox communications, primitive but steady. There is coding but some fragments are clear. I might…’ She fell silent. Memnon looked at her.

‘What?’

‘There is an uprising under way. It is flowing from the outer pilgrim areas. It… is not clear but there are indications that it is malefic in nature.’

Memnon was still for a second and then nodded.

‘The threads draw tighter.’

He took the pouch of dust from under his fur-lined cloak and gave a pinch to the wind. The dust blew, all but invisible in the dark and storm. Then the mist of dust caught the faint hint of light from the monastery high above and gleamed for a second. Memnon looked at the space it had occupied, even after it had gone. Then he was up and moving towards the mountain of buildings. Cinis followed, catching up with the Wanderer after only two strides. The auto-sled lurched after them on its wide tracks and skids. Geddon scrambled in its wake, panting with effort.

They were walking through snow by the time they reached the rock wall at the root of the monastery. Here there were none of the shanty drifts that clung to the monastery’s southern and western edges. Some had once tried, but the ruins that Memnon and his companions had sheltered in were all that remained of that attempt. The wind howled over the mountains and beat against the northern walls where they met the rock that had been the root of the first cloisters and shrines. No one came here. Even in the season of sun it was a bare desolation.

Memnon stopped as he reached the ice-covered cliff face. Above him, the bare rock rose for thirty metres before meeting the first stone of the great structure. Geddon reached him as he was moving along the wall. He had a small glow-globe in his hand, and held it close to the rock face as he moved. Under its light the ice and frost shone red and harsh white.

‘There is a way in?’ panted Geddon, almost collapsing against the rock face.

‘There is,’ said Memnon. ‘So much is forgotten, so much lost.’

‘You have been here before?’ asked Geddon.

‘I have,’ he said, pausing by a frost-caked section of rock. ‘Years ago. This place has been in my concerns and the concerns of our greater endeavours before.’

He paused, his hand over a crack, and then thrust his gloved fingers into the jagged gap.

‘I know,’ said Geddon, ‘but I thought that the experiment with the Tenth Path was confined to the Crow Complex.’

Memnon pulled at something out of sight and a section of rock hinged away from the cliff face. A narrow opening burrowed into the cliff beyond. Memnon held the red globe out, and its light caught the edges of dust-covered steps.

‘The Tenth Path were placed on this planet because it is… significant. The auguries have drawn us here many times. It is a crucible. Events – perhaps many, perhaps one – will occur here that contribute to the end we seek. That is why we were here before.’ He tapped the surface of the red sphere and it shone with bright, cold light which filled the rock-hewn passage. ‘That is why we are here now.’

They climbed the steps, up into the underbelly of the great monastery above. Here, down in the stone root of the structure, the air was warm from the geothermal exchangers sunk into Dominicus Prime’s crust. Both Memnon and Geddon shed their furs, stowing them in the auto-sled and taking equipment from the machine’s storage compartments. It would remain inside the entrance to the passage. Only Cinis kept his heavy cloak, his head covered by the fur-lined hood even as it got warmer and warmer.

After a while, rock gave way to crumbling blocks, and bricks skimmed with crumbling plaster. The gaudy faces of angels watched them pass, their features cracked and fading. The narrow stairs and passages branched and threaded through spaces that were thick with dust. Only the sound of their steps and the buzz and hiss of Geddon’s sensor arrays disturbed the silence. They began to pass through doors. Most were wooden, banded with metal, but some were inches-thick iron and locked with bolts driven by cogs and gears. But Memnon passed through every door, sometimes with a key, sometimes with a touch.

‘Master.’ Geddon broke the long silence as they approached a crumbling arch closed by a door of black wood beams and corroded steel. Memnon stopped.

‘What have you sensed?’ he asked.

‘Beyond this door, multiple heat and motion indicators consistent with a large number of people. From the vibrations in the floor I would guess that they are climbing a wide set of stairs from some other part of the sub-levels.’

‘This is the only way,’ he said. ‘We must pass.’

‘That’s not all,’ said Geddon, the auspex arrays on her skull fuming coolant gas from nostril-like openings. ‘Etheric indicators are rising.’ A set of bulbous, fluid-filled lenses extended from her back on a set of callipers, and dropped over her left eye. She raised her head and squinted at the door. The fluid in the lenses bubbled and became a luminous indigo.

‘There are Neverborn on the threshold,’ she said.

Memnon looked at the doors for a second.

‘On the path of truth the pure and just must pass through the place of serpents,’ he whispered to himself. He turned to Cinis. The tall figure raised his hooded head.

Memnon nodded.

Cinis moved forward to the doors. A thick iron bar lay across them. Cinis raised his left arm. His fur cloak fell back from a tattooed muscle. The words and symbols branded and inked across the skin drained light from the air. He gripped the bar and lifted it free of its brackets. It clanged like a struck bell as it hit the floor. Cinis pushed the doors open. A paved landing between two flights of steep stairs lay beyond.

Figures in red filled the steps and landing. Some of them stopped their descent as the door opened. A few held torches. Others were leading two figures held in webs of heavy chain. Iron bridles circled their skulls. Dried blood ran from black shards of metal hammered into their muscle. Signs had been cut into them. Their skin bulged, sinuous shapes moving beneath. Their hands had been severed and replaced with blades, hooks and lengths of spiked chain. Their heads jerked up as Cinis took a single step forwards.

The red throng turned. Knives, blades and cleavers slid into hands. The chained figures hissed.

The cloak dropped from Cinis’ shoulders. Beneath, he was bare to the waist. Words and symbols covered every inch of skin. Jagged marks overlapped with circles, pentacles and words written in languages dreamed by those that had thought they talked to angels. Some marks were scars or brands, others inked in grey pigment mixed from pyre-soot and holy water. Muscle boost and stimm injector plugs ran down his spine.

The red figures charged. Bare feet slapped on stone. Cinis drew the sickle from his waist. Its blade was a wide crescent of black metal. He gripped its double-handed haft, and swung. Runes blazed with furnace heat along the cutting edge. The air screamed. Ghost light dragged in the sickle’s wake. The marks on Cinis’ arms and hands wept blood.

The sickle cut the first pilgrim from hip to shoulder. Blood burned to smoke. Flesh and bone crumbled to ash. The charging pilgrims faltered, but Cinis was moving and cutting, his shape stuttering with speed as the sickle blade howled. The runes of its edge were white with heat, twisting into images of teeth, mouths and eyes. One of the chained figures yanked free of its handlers. The Neverborn creature within its flesh howled as it sensed the sickle’s thirst. More pilgrims were pouring down the stairs, but Cinis was a shadow-blur now, prayers of hate and repentance hissing from his lips.

The other chained figure snapped free of its bonds. Its head burst through its iron bridle, jaw elongating, molten iron drooling from its teeth. It bounded forwards, yanking the handler gripping its last chain into a wall with a wet crack. The sickle in Cinis’ hand twitched to meet the creature as it pounced. The daemon within the creature was fast and hungry, and driven by hate, but the blade in the sin-marked warrior’s hand was old and spiteful, and its hate was a white star to the creature’s candle. It met the creature’s neck, and cut the head free with a sigh. The skull fell, shedding burning flesh and twisted iron. A sound like metal on glass shivered in the air.

Cinis did not pause. Within twenty heartbeats there was silence on the stairway. Cinis knelt amongst the remains. The sickle glowed in his grip. Whispers and shreds of laughter hissed in the air as Memnon walked from the door.

‘Of these sins that you have done, and of the corruption you bear, you are absolved,’ he said, placing his palm on Cinis’ bowed head. The warrior shivered. ‘In the name of Him on Terra.’

He removed his hand and the sacred giant stood, fastening the sickle to his waist. The heat of its runes were fading as the daemon within its metal sank into its cold core. Memnon began to climb the steps. Cinis was about to follow when he noticed Geddon at his side. The hunched auspextra held out the warrior’s cloak.

‘Yours,’ she said. He looked at her for a second, then nodded once, and took the cloak. Geddon started after Memnon. Cinis draped the cloak over himself and followed.

‘Down!’ Gald hissed the word. Josef pressed against the alley wall. He was not feeling cold any more; he was not feeling much of anything. That was not good. Gald and the other arbitrator had slid into cover, their shotguns held tight. Agata dropped to one knee next to him. They were working their way down a twisting alley, keeping the stilt-legged creature in sight, trying to keep it downwind. It was not moving quickly, and its sight was not keen, but Josef had a nasty feeling it might have more senses than the mundane five.

It paused fifty paces in front of them. Its body became still, its hooded head moving slowly from side to side.

‘Do you see that?’ whispered Agata. Josef glanced at her, and shook his head. She had put her helmet back on as they tracked the stilt-walker creature. With the augmented sight of her armour, she could see better than any of them. ‘There, just behind it.’ Josef looked, but could see nothing. The snow covering the buildings and ground gathered and reflected what sparse light there was, but the world was still shrouded in night.

‘Sir,’ hissed Gald, and handed Josef an infra-monocle on a headband. He pulled it on and the world became a gritty green. He looked at the creature, and saw what Agata had noticed. There was a narrow opening in the alley wall just behind where it was standing. The stilt-walker paused as it looked around at it, and bobbed its head, the movement awkward, as though it no longer had the bones to bow.

‘I see,’ whispered Josef.

‘It’s standing guard,’ said Agata.

‘Yes,’ said Josef.

‘What would they leave behind, but think worth guarding?’ whispered Agata.

‘If we want to find out, we are going to have to wait for it to move, or kill it.’ He watched as the creature’s head turned to and fro. ‘Assuming that it’s alone…’ he added.

They had seen no other red pilgrims as they tracked the creature, but that did not mean they were not there.

Gald shifted behind them. Josef looked around, about to snap at the proctor to get back into cover.

‘Stand by once I have its attention,’ said Gald, collapsing the stock on his shotgun, and cinching it tight across his chest. ‘Once it moves I don’t know how long I can give you, so make it count.’ He looked up, his face pale in the green twilight of Josef’s dark sight. ‘With your permission, sir,’ he added.

Josef glanced back at the creature. Its head was still moving, back and forth, back and forth.

‘Go,’ he said, without looking round. He heard the low scrunch of Gald’s boots on the snow and then nothing. ‘As soon as it moves, we move,’ he said to Agata, and the remaining arbitrator. They did not reply. The snow began to fall more heavily.

A sound of glass breaking cut the soft quiet. The stilt-walker’s head snapped up, and froze. Then the sound came again, louder and more insistent. The creature’s body pivoted in the direction of the disturbance. Its head thrust forwards and Josef thought that he saw a gleam of teeth inside the cowl. Then it hunched down, whatever limbs hidden beneath its wrappings folding and bunching. It sprang forwards, bounding in skittering leaps across the snow-covered ground. Josef thought he heard a panting hiss as it passed the shadows where they crouched, and then it was out of sight.

He realised he was holding his breath.

‘Move,’ he said, forcing himself forwards across the open ground between them and the narrow opening the creature had been guarding. Agata was up and moving with him, the last arbitrator covering behind them. He reached the opening first, breath sawing in and out of his lungs. He stopped next to the wall beside it. Agata dropped into place behind him.

‘On your word,’ she said.

God-Emperor, give me this strength, he thought.

‘Go,’ he said, and went around the corner into the waiting dark beyond.

Twelve

The officer paused at the end of the rust-lined corridor. He cocked his head as though he had heard something. His pupils were pinpricks in his irises, even though the light was low. Ninkurra watched him through the eyes of the hawk perched in the pipes above him. Its wings furled, the bird was utterly still.

She had watched the hatches between the bilge decks and the upper decks for two hours before she had found what she was looking for. The lower decks were where the order and hierarchy of command gave way to the wild disorder of deck gangs, and the feral void-born that haunted the dangerous and shunned reaches of a ship. The borderland between the two was sometimes hard to find, but there were always people from the higher levels of any society who wanted or needed something that only the lower places could provide. So she had waited, and after less time than she had expected, fortune had smiled on her.

The man had staggered out of a rust-flecked hatch and clanged it behind him. Ninkurra could read the stimm and kalma use at a glance; that was useful, but it was his uniform that made her smile into the dark of her hiding place. He had removed his rank sash and helmet, but he had not wanted to go deep below decks without his sidearm, and that had marked him as clearly as if he had pinned his household commission papers to his forehead. That, and he still had his jacket crumpled under his arm. An ensign, she reckoned, maybe twenty-four, Solar. He was perfect for what she needed.

‘No one,’ he mumbled to himself, speech slurring. ‘No one… Got to keep it together, got to…’ He leant against the wall for a second and then flinched his hand back, stared at it and tried to brush the rust off with his other hand. ‘Watch in five hours…’ He swayed again, looking at his hands, blinking.

Ninkurra held the threads of her connection to the psyber-hawks taught. Patience… Patience… It was the key to speed, but it had taken her a very long time to learn that lesson. It had taken the Black Ships and then the Seminaria Tenebrae for her to be able to see how speed, and power, and strength all came from one thing.

The officer lowered his hands, swayed, and then turned back to step through the opening out of the corridor.

The hawk came out of the dark with a single silent beat of wings. The man started a scream, mouth wide. The hawk’s claws sank into his neck as its beak darted forward and fastened on his tongue. Ninkurra sent a thought and the injectors implanted in the bird’s claws punched into his flesh. Sedatives dumped into his bloodstream. He twitched for a second and then dropped to the deck. The hawk let go of his tongue and withdrew its claw injectors. Sitting on the unconscious man’s chest, it flicked its wings and looked up. From the shadows Ninkurra watched it through its twin’s eyes.

‘It was a punishment,’ said Cleander. ‘Or supposed to be, at least.’ He looked up at Iaso. He could see his face smeared across her eye lenses. Her face was utterly still. ‘Could you, I don’t know, nod occasionally, or just make some expression?’

‘I am a medicae, not a gurning sycophant,’ she said. ‘You are talking. I am listening.’

‘I can’t think why I haven’t sought out conversations like this before,’ he muttered.

‘What was the alien race that implanted the technology in you?’

He shook his head, looking at his hands resting on top of the green plastek sheet Iaso had draped over him. The seal-crest of his house winked back at him, lions and serpents worked in ruby and jet.

‘Not yet…’ he said quietly. ‘Let me get there.’

Iaso nodded.

‘As you wish.’

‘It began with a species called the “seken”.’ He gave a grunt of laughter. ‘At least that’s what I called them, because that was the sound they made – like birds clicking to each other, seken, seken, seken… It was during the glory times, the high times of fortune. I was at my best and at my worst. I had taken the smallest ship of our fleet out, way out beyond the southern trail. And that’s where I found the seken. They looked like… like a hound had mated with a fish. They spent most of the time in multi-coloured cocoon suits. They had ships, very slow ships, no warp capability, but they were slow blooded and long lived. They didn’t mind spending ages moving between the bits of their domain. They were more curious than anything else. If they had ever seen a human it had been a long time ago. There was just about enough to understand between us that we could do a deal. So that’s what we did.

‘They liked some scrap from other worlds that I had no use for. I wanted… well, they had these stones, you see, carved with lines as fine as hair, green and red and blue, jewel-bright. And when you touched them they lit up. The lines glittered, they were just beautiful… but when you held them, when you wrapped your fingers around them, and closed your eyes…’ His fist closed on air, and his eyes shut for a moment. ‘You could see… wonderful things, and for a while the universe was perfect. No needles, no pills, no chemicals washing into your blood – clean and pure and beautiful…’

‘So you did a trade,’ said Iaso.

Cleander opened his eyes, blinked, felt the memory drain, and nodded tiredly.

‘Yes, but that was not enough for me. I wanted the source. I wanted everything they had. So I took one of their ships, and… we did what we needed to find out where the stones came from…’ He smiled. ‘Then we went there. The seken were not expecting us, and… did not like us being there.’

‘There was fighting.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘There was fighting all right. Quite competent at defending themselves, it turned out. But they did not have the numbers and they didn’t know we were coming, so… We got a good haul, a very good haul, and the trip back to the bounds of civilisation was a quiet time.’

‘Are you trying to impress me?’

He shrugged. Winced.

‘In my condition, I am guessing a drink is out of the question?’

‘One hundred per cent correct.’

‘Thought so.’ He shifted, closed his eyes for a moment, and wondered what would happen if he did just try to stand up and leave. Iaso was not the kind to bluff. He had not tried to move his legs, but below the neck he could only move his fingers. Part of him wanted to try, but another part did not want to seem a fool.

‘The alien stones,’ said Iaso, ‘you sold them?’

‘For a tidy sum and then some. Viola did not like it, she had to move credit through some less than reputable people, but by all the saints and their bones, those stones sold.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘So I went back for more. The seken were not going to be happy given our earlier encounter, of course, but I took a bigger household force, brought in a couple of more serious merc-companies, and off we went… Well, it turned out that they were far angrier and a lot less stupid than I thought.

‘We came out of the warp near our target and there were these ships, like splintered black arrowheads. They hit us so fast that we didn’t even get a shot before half our engines were slag. When we did shoot back, half of the auspex returns turned out to be ghosts, shadows in the eyes of our guns. They boarded us. There is a species called the aeldari, old creatures of the stars, quick and prideful, and deadly. I had met aeldari, done some trade with a few, even. These creatures were like them, but not like them, you understand, more like their shadows – just as deadly, but infinitely more cruel.

‘We fought them as they took the ship. Well I say we fought, we resisted and were massacred. They were just so fast, and once the crew saw them kill some of their friends… I don’t know what happened to them all. I never saw that ship or any of the crew alive again.’

‘But you survived?’

‘Not really. They kept me alive. The seken had made a bargain with them, you see. Terra alone knows how they knew to find such creatures, but they had, and what they wanted was for me to suffer. They gave me to one of their flesh witches. It cut me open. Flayed the flesh from my spine from buttocks to skull. It had the skill to make sure I was conscious throughout, and once it had me open it showed me what it was going to do. They were threads when it showed them to me, dozens of silver threads like a hank of white hair. It planted them inside and put me back together like nothing had ever happened. Then they sent me on my way.’

‘If they are as you described, and did what you say, what possible reason could they have to just let you go?’

‘Because I made a deal with them,’ said Cleander. For a moment he held Iaso’s glass gaze and then dropped his eyes. He nodded to himself. ‘Of course I made a deal with them. The seken had paid them in living slaves of their own kind. They had paid for my ship to be taken, and for me to suffer torment, before being handed back to them. But then the creatures that took me found one of the stones. It was in my pocket, just dropped in my coat pocket. How stupid is that? The first time they brought me around there was one of them standing in front of me. It looked like a leader. The skin of its face was like sun-bleached paper…’

‘Most sinister,’ said Iaso. ‘They wanted the stones then?’

‘Oh, yes, they really, really did. I think they could have forced me to tell them, but once I opened my mouth with a counter-offer they were happy to hear it.’

‘What did you offer them?’

‘Everything about the seken, about the stones and the planet they came from, and an idea – that they use handing me back to the seken as an opportunity to ambush them in turn, to take them, or kill them, and the take back the stones.’

‘They agreed?’

‘They did. Afterwards, a long time afterwards, when I had time to think about it, I thought that they went with it because it amused them. My desperation and treachery amused them. Anyway, it happened, and I played my part and told them what I knew. They kept their word, which, all things considered, is surprising, don’t you think?’

He tried a smile. Iaso did not return it.

‘And they cut you open…’

‘As a gift,’ he said, the words falling cold on his tongue. ‘That was what they called it – a gift.’

‘A gift of… what?’

‘Life. They said it would keep me alive so that I could appreciate its other qualities one day, when… when I had forgotten that such a day was to come.’

He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Iaso did not say anything.

‘As much as I have enjoyed this conversation,’ he said, after a moment, ‘and if it is all the same with you, I think I will sleep now.’

Iaso did not reply, but he heard her walk away, her chrome servitors buzzing in her wake.

Ninkurra watched the officer wake and blink at the dark. The dull throb of his thoughts filled her awareness. She was not much of a telepath; her skills were specific and low on the index that the Imperium used to rate the raw strength of such things. But her skill was enough to sense the rough shape and taste of surface thoughts and emotions if she concentrated. She could not dip into minds and take what she needed, but there were other ways.

She had brought him back down to the quiet of the lower decks. It had taken an hour of dragging and carrying him through rarely used passages, but she needed quiet for this.

She waited as the officer stirred. He was lashed to an upright pipe, arms above his head. A single dim glow-globe shone above him. Beyond that circle of light he would be able to see nothing. She watched as his eyes cleared and focused.

The hawk swept out of the dark, wings spread, claws and beak wide. The man screamed. The bird landed on his chest, wings beating, claws digging into his flesh, shrieking its cry into his face. The sounds rose and echoed in the still dark.

‘Be still,’ said Ninkurra, sending the same thought command. The hawk on the man’s chest froze, and then furled its wings. It cocked its head, staring up into the man’s terrified face. Ninkurra stepped forward, the other hawk on her shoulder. The man’s eyes flicked to her and then back to the bird perched in front of his face. She could feel his panic settling into terror now.

‘I will ask questions, you will answer,’ she said.

‘Who are you?’ His voice was thick with the wound the hawk had bit into his tongue.

She twitched a thought, and the hawk on his chest opened its beak.

‘You will answer, that is all you will do.’

He nodded once, his eyes fixed on the hawk.

‘The inquisitor called Covenant, you know of him?’

The man nodded.

‘And a woman in his circle, or a prisoner, called Enna Gyrid, you know of her?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean, I don’t know those that he keeps around him. I am a crew officer. I am not part of the household. Mistress von Castellan keeps only household crew close to the inquisitor.’

Ninkurra felt the truth in his mind. He was very afraid, and not very bright. She was not surprised by his answer; in fact, it was just as she had expected. This man was not the path to finding her target, just a stepping stone. The hawks twitched as her thoughts bled into theirs. The man must have seen the movement, because he started talking without being asked.

‘The Mistress of Threads controls it all. It’s all shut and guarded on the upper levels. You have to be household or you can’t get anywhere, and even that lot don’t know much. Anything around the inquisitor’s business, the von Castellans are the only ones to know anything.’

Ninkurra nodded. She had already decided that the only way to find Gyrid was by getting to one of the von Castellans’ close associates. That or luck, and counting on luck was just damn-fool faith by another name.

‘Tell me everything you know about them. Where they eat, where they sleep, who is close to them most of the time?’

‘No,’ he said. The hawk twitched its head. ‘No, I mean, I mean I don’t know anything. I only took a commission contract a year ago. I’ve never even met them. I’m on the sump deck watch. I’ve only been into the higher decks once. I don’t know what you want…’

He trailed off, and she felt the fear form in his mind that he had said just the wrong thing.

And he was right. Ninkurra reached casually for the shard-blade fastened to the small of her back. The hawk on the ensign’s chest spread its wings to take flight.

‘Wait!’ The man flinched, eyes wide. The terror wrapping his thoughts was white-hot now. ‘I know something. Please!’

Ninkurra stilled.

‘Talk,’ she said.

‘After the last transition, something happened on the bridge. The duke and the void mistress were injured.’ He paused, panting as he fought and lost with his panic.

‘How?’

‘I don’t know, it was just what I heard, watch-change talk. They said that the duke had been taken to the primary medicae wing.’

‘And?’

‘And he’s still there… Whatever happened, the word is that he’s still there. The Mistress of Threads is running things, but the duke, he’s still in the primary medicae wing.’ He fell silent, panting, eyes on Ninkurra.

‘You have been to this medicae wing? You know where it is?’

‘Yes, a household officer had an arm crushed during a gunnery drill. I was one of the ones that got her to the chirurgeons.’

He was telling the truth, no doubt. More than that, his hope that he had bought his life was bubbling images to the surface of his thoughts. Blurred images of hoists, passages and doors flowed through Ninkurra’s mind.

‘Tell me how to get there. Clearly and slowly.’

‘And you will let me live?’

‘I swear and oath it in the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind, and by all I hold holy.’ She flicked out a thread of will, and the hawk released from his chest and rose to perch on a girder above them.

She watched his eyes flick across her face, saw his thoughts as he tried to decide to believe her. He really, really wanted there to be a way out of this.

‘All right, all right,’ he said, licking his lips.

He talked. Ninkurra listened, and watched the images of what he described shimmer across his thoughts. She was not strong enough to pull clearer mental images from him, but it would be enough. She memorised it all, folding it up into a mental space where it would stay, clean and accessible in entirety. Another gift of the Tyrantines, given a long time ago in a place so far away that it might as well have been a dream. When he was done, he hung from his bonds, panting with adrenaline, eyes shining as he waited.

Ninkurra drew the shard-sword. It unfolded with a rustle like dry leaves stirring in a breath of wind.

‘W-What…’ he stammered. ‘You said you would let me live. You swore–’

‘By the God-Emperor and all that I hold holy. But if He is a god then He doesn’t care if you die, and I hold nothing holy.’

He only managed to draw breath to scream before the fractal edge opened his throat.

Severita watched as the metal of the casket began to glow. She could feel heat on her face. The cryo-machines had begun emitting a high whine, and were venting thick plumes of steam.

‘You are not permitted to kill her,’ said Severita, out loud. She had ceased kneeling hours before and now stood a pace to the left of Mylasa and two from the casket containing Enna Gyrid. Severita’s bare sword rested on her left shoulder. She had not moved or spoken since she had risen, just watched as the worms of witch-light formed on the casket’s metal.

+I am not killing her,+ said Mylasa’s voice in her head. +If it ever comes to it, I will leave that to you.+

A thick rime of frost covered Mylasa, caking her robes and clotting her eye sockets. Sparks glittered around her head. Severita felt a pain build behind her eyes as she turned her head to look at the psyker.

+Of course, your best way of helping me not to do something accidentally fatal would be to not make stupid comments that require me to split my attention to reply to you.+

‘I have a duty to protect her.’

+Ah yes, duty. Simple mindless duty, the balm and salve of the guilty and the self-loathing.+

‘Don’t you serve from duty?’

+Habit, I think. Yes, habit more than anything else… Or maybe because, as an abomination in the eyes of the pure and righteous, I have few better options in this galaxy. Or maybe I just enjoy my work – after all, we can’t all be as miserable as you, now can we?+

Severita turned to stare back at the casket.

‘You hate us, don’t you?’

+Perceptive, but imprecise. To be fair, I hate you and your kind. Everyone else has at least an even chance.+

Severita thought about not responding to the barb.

‘Why?’ she asked, after a second.

+Because your kind of faith is the kind that does not question, that would run me through with that sword and not think twice, and all you would need was an order from someone you thought could forgive you whatever sin you’d think you’d committed.+

‘I am a sinner.’

+You are a narrow-minded creature filled with self-loathing.+

‘At least we have that in common.’

Mylasa’s thought voice was silent.

Severita nodded at the casket.

‘I am sure you have also considered that, besides being here to kill her if needed, I am also here to protect you if it comes to that.’

+I need no protection.+

‘Perhaps, but I am here anyway, and here I will stay. It is my duty.’

+Oh, well done – how very tidy. Now, as delightful as this has been, I must give my full attention to my duty.+

Severita felt her face become taut. Then she shook her head, and silence fell in her thoughts and in the frost- and heat-filled room.

The chamber beneath the surface of Iago was brighter than when she had last seen it. Figures in rags filled the spaces around the stone sarcophagi, all held in a frozen tableau. All but three of them were masked. She could see open mouths in the ragged holes in their masks, tongues frozen behind teeth as they sang a song that she could not hear. Of the unmasked figures, the first was Idris, her face impassive. The other was the same wild-eyed hermit they had met on the shore of the poisoned lake of Iago’s underworld. His teeth were bared and ropes of lightning crawled over his scalp. His hands gripped a woman by the hair and neck, pushing her down towards the surface of the liquid. She recognised the woman. It was herself: mouth open to gasp for air, skin blistering with the touch of the toxins in the water. An arc of droplets hung in the air, linking her to the rippled mirror of liquid.

‘They remade you,’ said Mylasa, stepping into view. Her green silk dress had morphed into an emerald bodyglove. ‘The Renewed killed you. They drowned you in poison, and brought you back to the living as someone else. They made you one of them, reborn, Renewed.’

Enna did not reply. She was staring at the scene, at the cold hardness in Idris’ eye.

‘From there Idris gave you a new past, a new life to remember and believe in.’

‘This is wrong. I don’t remember this. This did not happen.’

‘It did, Enna,’ said Mylasa. She reached over the lip of the sarcophagus and dipped her finger into the still, rippled water. The ripples did not move or change. ‘And you do remember it. This is your memory. It was buried deep, but it was there.’

‘Idris would not have done this, she was–’

‘A heretic, Enna. She lied and deceived and manipulated. She took the Renewed from Talicto, and used them to steal his secrets and then to kill him. She was not a victim of the massacre at the conclave – she was the orchestrator of that atrocity. She did it. Not Talicto. Not someone else. Her.’

‘But Talicto was there. I saw him, we all saw him…’ said Enna, even as she could feel the objection fading into nothing.

Mylasa had moved to stand next to the frozen image of Idris. She looked up at the inquisitor’s eyes.

‘No, Talicto wasn’t there, Enna. He was long dead. What you saw, what everyone saw, was something else. I don’t know for certain, but I would guess that it was another member of the Renewed, shaped to pass for him. Very clever, really. The Triumvirate stole his secrets, then used his identity to cover their own activities. We were tracing what we thought were Talicto’s experiments in warp-craft for years, but now you have to wonder if they weren’t his at all…’

Enna opened her mouth to object, but the words stopped before they could reach her lips. A different thought formed in their wake instead, cold and hard in her mind.

‘She’s alive, isn’t she? I saw her die, but she is alive.’

Mylasa smiled sorrowfully.

‘That seems very likely. What you saw, what everyone saw, was a show of shadows.’

‘And she left me, she left me with Covenant…’ She paused, and looked again at the frozen image of herself before she was plunged into the poison-filled sarcophagus.

You are looking for revelation…

‘Why?’ she said.

Mylasa let out a long breath. The image of the chamber and the rag-clad figures was fading, shape and colour smudging. Only the image of Mylasa remained sharp and clear.

‘That, my dear, is a question we are here to answer.’

Darkness billowed up around the psyker, and Enna was drowning in lightless water again.

SMALL LIGHT THAT IS THIS SOUL

Acia ducked back into the shadows, holding her breath. It was hot down here in the deep root of the monastery. Very hot. The stones of the walls were crowded with crumbling saints, and the dust-covered floors were warm under her feet. She had run, and crawled down and down until she did not know where she was, until the dark was all there was. Then she had stopped, and breathed, and whatever had driven her down here faded. Hunger had filled her belly, and the silence of the dark had suddenly seemed strangling rather than comforting. She had closed her eyes, and the child’s prayers of her mother and father, spoken over her as she tried to sleep in the decks of pilgrim ships, breathed into her mind.

Oh, small light that is this soul, shine in the dark undimmed…

Oh, great light that is all, shine for this soul so small…

She listened and the memories must have tugged her from exhaustion to sleep, because she was walking down a corridor now, feet padding on red and white tiles, eyes looking up at tapestries showing a man of gold – who must be the Emperor – wounded and bleeding, the blood from His wounds falling into the hands of haloed saints who crowded close to Him. There were skulls stacked in niches along the walls and candles burning on iron stands. It was all somehow soft and strangely liquid, like a reflection glimpsed on a pool of oil and water.

There was someone there: a woman in white robes hung with chains. There was another person there, too: a man in brushed steel armour with a neat, iron-grey beard. Acia did not feel afraid any more, just puzzled. She did not recognise either of the people, and though the surroundings felt familiar, it was not anywhere she had been. It looked like a part of the monastery, but not one she recognised. Maybe it was one of the higher cloisters, up amongst the spires where only the holy orders most blessed went. But then why was it here in her dreams?

‘Lord inquisitor,’ said the woman in chains, bowing low. ‘We will find the witch.’

‘That would be something that I would not advise,’ said the man.

‘Oh, small light that is hope, shine for all that will see…’

The words of prayer whispered in her ear. She spun around.

And light poured into her eyes. Red but bright, like the glow of a vast coal before it cooled. Acia tried to move away, but the dream of floors and walls had gone, and the glow was getting closer, and there were voices, shouting and whispering and calling, and she could see now that the light was not one fire. It was thousands, millions, a countless mass of flames forming a single inferno. Heat broke over her. She felt herself begin to burn. She wanted to scream. She could not scream.

She opened her eyes just as the scream was forming on her lips. It drained back into her throat. She was sitting in a dark corridor, feet curled under her. And there was light, red and orange, flickering in the middle distance. She could hear the sound of footsteps, coming closer, like the sound of a river flowing over rocks.

A wave of figures in robes of every colour were coming down the passage towards her. Some held burning torches, some whips and ropes.

‘There she is!’

She tried to run, but found her limbs would not move.

‘Witch! Witch!

Oh, small light that is this soul, shine in the dark undimmed…

But she could not move, and the words of the prayer were fading and something was rising within her, blotting out thoughts with pain and anger, and she could see nothing but dust and the ruins of a dead city, and the howl of wolves was the laughter of the wind.

Her eyes were still open as the shadows around her flickered and crashed forwards towards the oncoming torchlight. Then the screams filled her ears.

Oh… small… light…

And then she was falling and falling, and could not hear the words of her lost prayer.

Thirteen

Agata went through the alley mouth just behind Josef. The gap was only just wide enough for them to pass through.

‘To the souls of the unworthy the gates of purity are like the eye of a needle…’ whispered a memory in her head.

The space beyond was green in the light of her helm display. Static popped and fizzed at the edge of her sight. She could see Josef just in front of her, hammer in his hands, moving forward a step at a time. There was an opening between the roofs above. A few scattered snowflakes fell from the slit of night sky.

‘There is blood here,’ said Josef, quietly.

‘How can you tell?’

‘I can smell it.’

Agata signalled the arbitrator to cover the entrance gap.

Josef edged further forwards. Agata looked around at the close-pressed walls. There were shapes attached to them, lumpen and still. Agata paused, stepped closer, and then away.

‘There are severed hands pinned to the walls,’ she said.

Josef stopped suddenly. Agata looked around, bolter up and swinging with her gaze. Then she saw.

A carved head lay against the end wall of the opening. In the thin green light of her dark vision its features were defined by shadows. Dark fluid streaked the stone of its cheeks. Metal bars had been hammered into its stone eyes, and a pair of human arms hung from them. A body sprawled beneath them, half lying on the ground, half hanging.

‘What…’ began Agata.

‘It’s a shrine,’ said Josef. ‘A profaned shrine.’

Josef was bending down, slowly, eyes fixed on the marks daubed on the stone face. They hurt to look at.

‘A shrine to what? What can such creatures worship?’

‘The truth,’ said a voice like the rattle of dried skin. Josef jerked back to his feet, hammer rising. Agata’s gun was aimed at the figure pinned to the stone face. It was moving, shifting under its wrapping of red rags. ‘That is what we bring – the truth.’

Agata’s finger tensed to fire. Josef raised a hand.

‘No!’ he said.

A dry rustle of a chuckle came from the figure.

‘You see, you want the truth too,’ said the figure.

A man, thought Agata, but there was something about the way his words slid into her ears that made her think of serpents gliding over dry sand.

‘What is this?’ growled Agata. ‘He is one of them… they did this to one of their–’

‘No,’ said Josef. ‘They were guarding this, guarding him. He is not just one of them.’ Agata watched as Josef tilted his head. ‘Are you?’

‘I was called Krade, and I am the Pilgrim of Hate.’

There was a smile in the words. Agata looked back to where the arbitrator stood watch at the opening onto the alley. Josef squatted down so that he was at eye level with the man.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Agata.

‘Getting answers,’ said Josef, and Agata could hear the control in it. He looked back to Krade. ‘You started this, didn’t you?’

‘I was the false prophet, yes,’ said Krade. ‘But a prophet only. I have done my work, and my children have set me down to sleep on a bed of pain.’

‘What are you doing here, who sent you here?’

‘Providence sent me,’ said Krade, and shuddered, his whole body jerking. Fresh blood glittered on the metal spikes pinning him to the saint’s head. ‘It is our time, and I am the prophet of that future.’

‘And what do you see in that future?’

‘Josef…’ began Agata.

He held up a hand to her.

‘What does it mean, you mean?’ asked Krade, his smile broad and bloody. ‘Why am I here? Why did this happen? What is my significance?’ A low dry wracking cough. ‘My significance is that this false paradise of ours must burn and so someone must set the first fire. It was seen, you see. On Nex, I killed my redeemer, just as my children have nailed me to this shrine to die. In his pain he saw that the one who will bring final truth and tip the world into fire was made here, right here – a child of the dark. This is unholy ground, and all that was needed for the prophesied destroyer to rise was for this place, its cradle, to burn and drown in blood. So I came and made it so.’

Josef was silent, his face hard. Agata could feel her own anger at the blasphemy.

‘You are a priest, aren’t you?’ said Krade. ‘I can smell the blindness on you. How does your god comfort you now, priest? Does he whisper promises in your ears? Does he fill your heart with the light of certainty and meaning?’ The man grinned. The skin of his face creased like paper. ‘Or is he silent? I know. I was once like you. Just like you. Once, worlds and stars away, I had faith. I believed. I knew that there was a plan, a great and divine plan that everything fitted into. I knew that He protects. I knew that He was light and all else darkness.’

Krade shuddered, and then coughed a great gobbet of bloody phlegm onto his chin.

‘Then I was shown the truth… You can see it, you know. You can see it in a boy dying on a plague bed, or in the drip of blood from the lips of someone that has just spent their last breath asking for grace, for compassion. You can see it then, bright and clear as a candle lit for prayer. And you know what it is?’ He breathed in, and the air rattled wetly in his throat. ‘Nothing. There is no hope, no light, no divine will guiding and protecting us. There is just the embrace of night and the long, slow, screaming slide down to the grave.’

Agata felt coldness run through her. The words the man was speaking slid and shivered in her skull. Every instinct trained into her was screaming for her to pull the trigger and punch a shell through this thing’s body. Then she noticed that his eyes had moved from Josef to her, as though he could see her clearly through the dark.

‘You, old daughter of a corpse, you want to know more. Do you want to know the truth?’

‘Heretic,’ she said, the word somehow cold and flat in her mouth.

‘I can show you,’ he said. ‘I was shown it. I was shown that there are other powers in this universe. Great and vast powers, that hunger and claw at us and the excrement we call life. Some call them gods, but they too are false. Life’s last mark of cruelty on our skin – all gods are lies, and all hope is dead.’

‘What did you come here to do?’ asked Josef.

‘And once you see that, you see that the only reaction is hate. What else can there be? Hate is purity. Oblivion is salvation. And once I knew that, I had purpose again. It filled me. It is the truth. It spoke with my lips, and by my hand, others saw.’

‘You will answer me.’

‘It began here, on this spot it was born – the false light, the beast of truths, the pilgrim of hate, red without and night within. The tools of false gods are my claws and hate my gift. I was not the beginning, and I am not the end. The truth lives, you fools. It began here, with false saint’s tears, and it lives and walks, and you cannot stop it. It wants to be free. It is coming – the last, true pilgrim of hate, the false prophet of oblivion. And I have laid the wood for its birthing pyre. The fire of this last candle shall become an inferno. When all burns, and there is only fire and night, it will come and it will bring truth to all.’ Krade smiled.

Agata heard three loud gunshots in the middle distance.

‘Josef,’ she said.

The preacher had not moved, but was still looking at the smiling bloody mask of Krade’s face.

‘The world ends by many hands, priest – the deluded, the blind, and the cruel. You are as dead as your god,’ hissed Krade. ‘I can see it inside you. I can taste it. Can you feel the cold hand on your shoulder?’ Krade leaned forwards suddenly, so that his lips were inches from Josef’s ear. ‘Listen, listen to me, I have a gift for you.’

The arbitrator at the end of the alley jerked his gun up.

‘Josef!’

‘Your god is dead. And soon you will join him.’

The arbitrator’s shotgun roared. Agata pivoted towards the opening to the alley. Krade was laughing, cold and shrill, blood bubbling up with the sound.

Josef brought the hammer up and then down, with a snarl. Krade’s skull shattered into bloody pulp and scraps of bone. The arbitrator fired again.

A shape loomed across the snow and night, towering stilt-limbed, ragged wrappings billowing around it. Agata had an instant to catch an impression of skin stretched over bone, and then an iron-tipped arm punched down and lifted the arbitrator off the ground in a spray of blood.

The cloister of the Sage Order of the Faithful echoed with voices. Ladders rattled along metal rails, built into the high shelves running down every corridor. Brothers and sisters of the order hurried between rooms with armfuls of scrolls and carts of books. In every contemplation cell, men and women bent over texts, running bone reading wands over faded words. In the great scriptorium at the centre of the cloister, the scribes had stopped work on new manuscripts for the first time in living memory. Scribe, archivist or novice; all were plunging back through the stacks of monastery records.

Iacto moved through it all, waving away signs and words of respect. He found Claudia in the great stack, standing on a wooden walkway above the cylindrical shaft lined with the order’s oldest tomes. Here, and throughout the rest of the order’s cloister, were the records of days for the entire monastery complex, written as an act of devotion by members of the order. There were other records and libraries, of course. Several of the other orders kept and produced all manner of scriptures, but it was the anointed duty of the Sage Order of the Faithful to mark the passing of days, and to keep the knowledge of the monastery alive.

‘Brother abbot,’ said Claudia, as he approached. She was working in a ledger, marking something off. Books lay open on brass stands around her. Her face was pinched and there were black shadows of fatigue under her eyes. ‘My message reached you quickly, then.’

‘Message?’ he asked. She looked up at him, a frown deepening. He shook his head. ‘No message reached me.’

‘Then why–’

‘The inquisitor is not here because of the uprising. He is here for something else. He is not here to help save the monastery. Whatever he is looking for we must find first – it is the only thing that is keeping him here. Without it we are alone.’

Claudia was very still for a moment, then picked up the ledger she was working in and turned it around so that he could see it.

‘My message was that we have found something.’

Iacto’s eyes flickered over the pages. Dates in the monastery’s calendar form ran down one of the pages, with cyphered notes on the facing page.

‘What are these?’

‘The Inquisition has been here before,’ she said. ‘Many times before.’

‘These are just dates, and codes for the keeping of the books of days–’

‘These are dates from the past one hundred years where there is no record. None. Not a note of a death, or the giving of a pilgrim gift.’

‘Curious, but–’

‘Except there are records, or there were. Members of the order were performing their devotion in these times. Their presence is recorded, as are the number of lines scribed. But there is no trace of what they wrote.’

Iacto nodded, reading the details from the ledger.

‘The Inquisition, though. How can you be sure?’

‘Marginalia. I looked at the prayer books of the scribes that are noted as devoting themselves to work on the days where there are no records.’

‘And?’

‘There was nothing in most of them, but in one…’ She held up a small book, bound in plain, worn leather. It was a prayer-pillow. Each member of the order made and kept such a book, reading from it and inscribing prayers into it. ‘This belonged to a Brother Tehlo of our order.’

Iacto took the book and opened it. Pages had been marked with black ribbons. He looked at the neat text running down the page. At the bottom, blurred where the writer had clearly tried to scrape the ink away, was a line of cursive running up the side of the verses of cant for that day.

‘And the anointed of the left hand of the Most Holy Emperor did come with the morning light, and I was summoned to attend to him and to give him record of all the strangeness that has passed within the monastery.’ Iacto stopped reading and looked up at Claudia. ‘How could this not be known? If the Inquisition came here before they must have seen someone, and someone must have seen them.’

Claudia reached out and turned the pages of the prayer book to another black ribbon, then another and another.

‘It goes on, telling of how an inquisitor came in secret to the monastery, and how Tehlo was summoned each time, to talk about events in the records – miracles, the unexplained, rumours of saints and witches. It seems that he became a tutor or teacher, or keeper of some sort.’

‘A tutor?’

‘That is the implication.’

‘What would the Inquisition need a scribe to tutor?’

Claudia did not answer, but took the book back and began to turn the pages, showing him brief entries, all partially scraped away.

‘He begins willingly, even exultant. He talks about revelation. He says how he is blessed to have been singled out for this task. He writes the word revelation against pages and prayers for months, and the prayers are about forgiveness, and moulding the soul. I am not certain, but I think that they were keeping–’

‘Someone,’ said Iacto, looking up, eyes fixed on the cliff of shelves and the bustle of his brothers and sisters. ‘The Inquisition was keeping someone here in this monastery. Someone who needed tutoring.’

Claudia nodded.

‘Someone that frightened Brother Tehlo. You see, he writes like this for some time, but then the prayers he copies into the pages become about fear, entreaties to the Emperor for purification, forgiveness or protection.’

‘The obvious questions are who and where – and then the even more obvious, why?’

‘There are no answers, but there is this,’ she said, and turned to a page and pointed at a single passage.

Iacto looked at the page. He looked up at Claudia, feeling the shock spread across his face. She met his look and nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said, seeing the obvious logic spreading through his thoughts, ‘it had to be. How else could the records be purged and this all happen and it not be spoken of?’

He closed the book, tucked it into his robe and began to walk away, back up and out of the archive.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Claudia to his back. He did not answer. He paused and looked around at the robed figures moving on the platforms, and the books piled on shelves and lecterns. His duty, the holy work and treasure of every man and woman who had stood in his place.

‘Get all of our order out of the cloister,’ he called to Claudia. ‘Get as many of them as far away from the lower reaches as you can. Close to the landing pads if you can get that far. It won’t be long before night comes for us here, too.’

Iacto was still for a moment.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Claudia. Iacto looked at the note at the bottom of the prayer book, then gave a cold smile.

‘I am going to go and see what salvation your discovery can buy us.’

The cold smile had not moved from his face, and in his mind the single line written by the dead monk turned over and over in his thoughts.

Most blessed are we who stand under the sight of those who keep vigil in the Most Holy Emperor’s name. She is an abomination. The girl is an abomination.

It had been the last marked page in the book, and after it were only blank pages, waiting for prayers and thoughts that would not come.

Josef turned in time to see the arbitrator who had been guarding the alley mouth yanked into the air on the stilt-walker’s hand. The man fired. Shot blasted through rags and flesh. The stilt-walker arched its back and shrieked, with a voice that sounded all too human. It brought up its other hand, and tore the arbitrator’s head from his torso.

Agata fired then. Three bolts punched into its shoulders and head. It shuddered back, dropping the remains of the arbitrator. Its bulk still blocked the exit from the alley.

Josef ran towards it, forcing down the numbness of his injuries. The stilt-walker lashed a kick at Agata. Josef saw the flash of sharp metal. Agata moved back fast, bolter braced to fire… and her leg – the wounded leg that had carried her since the first ambush – crumpled beneath her. Josef saw it happen in a jammed-clock slowness, as he ran towards the opening. Agata’s gun fired. The bolt cut wide. She was trying to rise, fresh blood running down the battered silver of her greave, black in the cold monochrome of his dimming vison. And the stilt-walker was coiled back, limbs bunching under its rags, blood showering from it. Agata’s gun was rising, but too slow. It sprang forwards, and Josef swung his hammer up, even as he knew that he would not reach it in time.

A shotgun blast roared out of the dark. A solid round struck the stilt-walker dead in the centre of its mass and pitched it forwards. It caught itself as it fell, twisting around with a snap of popping vertebrae.

Josef reached it and swung his hammer down. An arm, stick thin and iron hard, flicked out, and hit him in the gut as his blow descended. He flew back and hit the alley wall. Stars exploded in his sight. He was gasping, his insides burning.

The thing was rising, its rags bloody tatters.

Another shotgun blast, and the thing slammed backwards with the impact.

Proctor Gald walked out of the dark, his gun levelled. His helmet was gone, and the left side of his face was a bloody ruin. He racked the slide of his shotgun. The spent casing clicked to the ground.

The stilt-walker leapt from the ground. Gald pulled the trigger. Shot ripped through the creature like hail through wet paper. Agata fired. A trio of bolt shells tore the creature’s left arm and leg off in a ripple of explosions. Josef forced himself forwards.

The creature, though, was still alive. It struck Gald hard and rammed him back onto the snowy ground. It was gurgling, bloody froth gagging its shrieks as it scrabbled at the proctor with its iron claws. Gald had his hands up. Josef was next to the creature, hammer swinging up above his head. The creature battered Gald’s hands away. Josef swung his hammer down.

There was no prayer on his lips, no plea to the Emperor for strength, just the raw surge of muscle and anger. The head of the hammer struck the thing’s back. Force juddered the haft in his hands. He heard bones crack, but he was already shifting his weight to pull the hammer up and around to hit again, and again.

‘Josef.’ He heard the words and then felt a hand yank at his shoulder. ‘Josef!’

He lowered the hammer. Agata was next to him. He was gasping air, his eyes still blurred and swimming with spots of bright colour. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and looked at the tangled heap of flesh and rags on the ground at his feet. He could see limbs and skin where the fabric had fallen aside. Crude stitches criss-crossed starved flesh that looked as if it had been stretched, melted and set like a child’s sugar treat. Some of it looked human, other parts of it like a dog. A jagged rune spiralled across an exposed area of skin. When he shifted his gaze, the mark remained for a second inside his eyes. The claws on its hands and legs were metal blades jammed into flesh and bone, and bound in place with barbed wire. Josef recognised a paring knife and the blade of a set of shears amongst the blades, both sharpened so that point and edge shone in his dark sight.

A gurgling cough pulled the hammer up in his hands for a second before he lowered it again. Gald lay half under the thing’s remains. The proctor’s face was a mask of his own blood now. His left arm ended in a torn stump of ripped fingers and twisted armour. More blood was flowing in a steady beat from a hole punched through his chest plate.

‘Help me,’ he called to Agata, and bent to pull the proctor out from under the dead stilt-walker.

Gald shook his head.

‘There are more of them…’ Blood foamed from his mouth. ‘They will be coming. Taking that one down made a lot of noise.’

‘We will get you back to the monastery,’ said Josef. ‘There are medics. You will live.’

Gald smiled. His chest was heaving now, each breath jolting through him.

‘Old and fat, and a soft fool, too,’ hissed Gald. Then he twitched and went still. Josef did not move for a second. The blood that had been beating from the hole in Gald’s chest had become an oozing trickle.

‘He was right,’ said Agata. ‘We have to move, and move now.’

Josef nodded. His hands were red.

‘We have to reach Covenant,’ he said.

Krade’s words rattled in the hollow of his thoughts.

‘It is coming – the last, true pilgrim of hate…’

He forced himself to stand, and felt himself sway. Close by, a hooting cry rose up into the snow-flecked air. He took a first step and paused, looking back at Gald lying on the cold ground, snowflakes already turning his blood to pink slush. Then he bent and closed the eyelids over the man’s pale eyes.

‘Emperor of all, welcome the soul of this, Thy unfailing servant,’ he said, and then straightened, and began to limp towards the lights of the distant monastery.

Crowds ringed the entrance to the Great Cathedral. Members of every order, high and low, pressed close, shouting for the shrine guards to let them into the sanctuary. Half of them thought that the Great Cathedral was the safest place to be. Others saw it as a holy place that the Emperor would never let harm come to. All the mob wanted to get inside for one purpose – to live a little longer. But the shrine guard had their orders. They barred the path to the high doors, their bronze shields touching, iron staves raised and ready.

Iacto shoved his way to the front, ignoring the words shouted at him. He stepped towards the line of guards.

‘I am Abbot Iacto,’ he called. A loud shout went up from behind him, and then a broken tile flew through the air and broke on one of the guard’s shields. They took a step forwards. He had never been in a fight, let alone a warzone, but he could read the tension in the guards even through their masks. He stepped out of the crowd towards the shield-wall, hands raised in peace, and spoke as loudly and as calmly as he could. ‘I am Abbot Iacto of the Sage Order of the Faithful, I must be admitted. I must see the bishop.’

‘Get back,’ shouted one of the guards, and shoved out with his shield. Iacto staggered back into the press of bodies behind. A jeering growl rose around him as some hands pushed him forward and some tried to pull him back. He recognised a woman in the robes of a senior sister in the Order of the Blessed Flame. Her face was twisted around a shout, her eyes flashing with rising panic.

This is what we truly are, he thought. Underneath all the piety and prayer, we now stand pure and clear. For all the words and forms we stood behind, we now feel the world shake, and what do we find we are – saints, or weak souls wanting to live just a little longer?

He stepped back towards the shields. The guard raised his iron truncheon.

‘I have come from the inquisitor,’ he said, clearly but in a voice that he hoped would not carry. The guard hesitated, and Iacto stepped closer. ‘I have been in the House of Concordance consulting with the inquisitor’s servants, and I must see the bishop immediately.’

The guard glanced behind himself as though for help. Word of the inquisitor’s arrival had spread almost as fast as the panic. Iacto was not certain which was the source of more terror to most: the murder tide rising from the drifts or the coming of the Inquisition.

The guard looked back at Iacto, who had stayed perfectly still.

‘Immediately,’ he repeated.

The guard hesitated for another second, and then stepped to the side, motioning for Iacto to get through the shield-wall fast. The crowd behind him roared as they saw the opening, and surged forward. Iacto was through the line and passing through a small sally door set next to the closed main doors.

Silence closed over him as he stepped beyond. The vast space beneath the processional was dark. The candles that hung in their thousands on wheel-like candelabras were unlit. The air smelled of dust. In the distance, the flames of the high altar burned, the light slicing into thin shadows as it passed through avenues and rings of pillars as wide as castles.

Iacto paused for a moment, considering his next step. Bishop Xilita had a private chapel and sanctuary beneath the high altar. In times like these she was likely to be there. He took a step towards the light of the altar and then paused. There were sure to be more shrine guards around the high altar and the entrance to the bishop’s sanctuary. He did not want to have the same argument with them as he had had with the guards on the main doors – an argument he was not convinced he would win again. And he was not certain how much time there was. The inquisitor was not here to protect or save them, and that meant that a new set of decisions had to be made if they were not all going to end as ashes. Xilita was the only one who might be able to do something. But she could only do that if she knew, and soon. There was no time to argue with terrified underlings.

There were other ways into the sanctuary. Like anywhere in a monastery complex, for every door and passage you could see there were more that you couldn’t. After another moment of thought he slid sideways into the shadowed corners. He found the small door he needed tucked in behind a dried fountain made to wash pilgrims’ feet. He almost forgot to take a light, and then took an unlit candle from a stand, and lit it with a striker. Then down he went, into the narrow, dust-scented world of the undercroft.

He edged through passages, shoulders brushing the bare stone walls, pausing when he found another door or spur to remember the plans of the passages he had examined in the past. He took a wrong turn three times, but at last reached a doorway only half a metre wide, the wood black with age. It was locked, but like most whisper doors in the monastery, the lock opened to the flat, iron key he carried as a mark of his office. As he pushed it open a crack, the thought of whether any of the red pilgrims knew their way through the whisper tunnels crossed his mind. A chill glided over his skin, but he shook it free. It was a worry that would have to wait.

He pushed the door wider. The hinges turned silently, as though they had been oiled. A corridor ran to the left and right. The light was low. Only single candles had been lit on the candelabras hanging from the ceiling. Red and white tiles covered the floor, and tapestries showing the wounded Emperor scattering blood to his most holy saints hung over the stone walls. There were doors leading off the corridor in both directions. Most were narrow and would lead to contemplation cells. On occasion in the past, a bishop would choose a few select pilgrims to become companions of their solitude. They would live down here in the bishop’s sanctuary, never seeing another soul outside of the bishop’s entourage. Dark whispers said the companions’ prayers were said to have kept some bishops young past the age of dotage. Orphaned children and the dying had once been much favoured. Iacto had never heard of Xilita following the practice, but he had also never been into the bishop’s sanctuary before.

He stood for a moment orientating himself to what he could remember of the plans, and then turned in the direction of the chapel. He moved carefully, listening and glancing around as he took every step, but all was silent. That was strange; he had expected at least a token number of the shrine guard, but there were none.

He reached the chapel door. It was shut. He paused then pushed it softly. It was not locked, and hinged open a crack without making a sound. He pushed it slightly wider and slipped through. He was not sure why he was moving like a thief, other than he had no formal permission to be there. But something about the silent, half-lit passages made him shrink from shouting his presence.

The chapel was small, barely twenty paces from door to altar. The only light came from half a dozen votive candles burning on the altar, beneath a statue of the Emperor carved from jet. Gilded chains circled and weighed down His bare shoulders, tethering Him to a sea of golden hands reaching up to Him. There were no benches or pews. Those who came here to pray knelt on the stone floor. At that moment there was only one supplicant.

Bishop Xilita knelt at the foot of the altar, her back straight and her head bowed. The weighted chains of her order lay on the floor around her, their weight lifted for this time of prayer.

Iacto shut the door silently behind himself and was about to step forwards, when Bishop Xilita spoke.

‘I knew one of you would come,’ she said, without moving. ‘I had faith.’

Iacto shook off his surprise, and opened his mouth to speak.

‘Faith…’ said another voice. Iacto froze. Ice poured through him. ‘Perhaps…’

A man stepped out of the gloom beside the altar and into the glow of the candlelight. Behind him the shadow of a narrow whisper door stood open. The man was robed in aged patchwork cloth. His head was clean-shaven, his skin golden-dark and faded tattoo dots marked his cheeks. Iacto would have taken him for one of the countless ascetics that came to holy places with just the faith in their hearts and the air in their lungs. But there was something in his eyes and the way he moved that made Iacto shrink back to the shadows by the door.

The man stepped next to Xilita. The bishop did not move from her place of prayer.

‘You doubt me?’ she said. ‘I kept your Revelation safe here. And in all these years since, I have kept its secrets, but in all those years I have heard nothing.’

‘Not my Revelation,’ he said, turning to look at the candles burning on the altar. ‘And for your devotion you were raised high. But in your service you failed. Do not think that your service buys you more than you have already received. The reward of faith is suffering.’

Xilita looked up then, chains clinking as she moved.

‘Is it here? I watched, as I did before, even after Revelation was taken from me. There have been signs in the last days. Is this the moment? Will it be here that He will rise again?’

‘Yes,’ said the man. Xilita shuddered at the word, and the chains clinked. After a second Iacto saw tears running down her cheeks, sparkling in the candlelight. The man reached out a hand and brushed them from her face. ‘But there are things that must be done – prices that must be paid.’

‘I have always been faithful,’ said Xilita, still weeping. ‘All that can be given, I have given.’

‘No, you haven’t – not yet. Tell me, bishop. What did happen to Revelation?’

‘It was as I told you,’ she said, and there was an edge of desperation in her voice. ‘The scribe we used to teach her grew afraid. He… started to see something in her. He vanished, and then a little while later so did she.’

‘Out of a cell no more than twenty paces from this spot, under the eyes of you and your guards… gone like a whisper.’

‘It was and is the truth.’

He nodded once, and gave a sad smile.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I see it in you.’

‘It is happening again, isn’t it? Just like when Revelation was found. The signs began, and for a moment I thought she was here again, that she had come home.’ She paused, looking up at him, and then shook her head, with a melody of chain links. ‘There is an inquisitor called Covenant here,’ she said. ‘He has people looking through the records, looking for marks of a miracle. For a moment I thought he was one of you. He is just like–’

‘I know who he is,’ said the man, gently. ‘I am here in part because of him.’

Xilita tilted her head, eyes narrowing.

‘He is your enemy…’ she said.

‘He is something that needs to be dealt with.’

‘But he is one of you, one of the Inquisition. You are the Emperor’s chosen, His instruments.’

‘Naivety does not suit you, bishop.’

‘Then what have I believed in all these decades? What was I doing when I lied to my brothers and sisters in faith?’

The bald man let out a breath.

‘Everything you have been told is a lie,’ he said, and knelt down so that he was face to face with the old bishop. ‘And all of it is true. The end of everything that has been is coming, but salvation will also come to humanity. You have helped that come to pass. That is true, Xilita, and you can believe that.’

‘And Covenant?’

‘It is not just enemies that stand across the true path, fools do too.’

She nodded and then raised her head again.

‘It will not be here, will it? He will not walk amongst us here, will He?’

The man shook his head, and reached out a hand to her shoulder.

‘We need you to do one last service for us. It is not a small thing, and it will mark your soul with blood and suffering.’

She laughed then, and lifted one of her chains of penance. The weight swung slowly on its end.

‘Have I ever refused such tasks?’

In the shadowed recess at the back of the chapel, Iacto watched, mind racing, trying to still the thunder-beat of his heart. He was aware of the thinness of the gloom around him, of the fact that there was just shadow and air between him and what he was seeing and hearing.

Iacto began to let his breath out. How was he going to get out of this? If he did, what was he going to do? His head was aching again. Nausea-bright lines coiled across his eyes.

‘It is supposed to be here,’ said the bald man, softly. ‘In this place and at this time. The dust speaks of it, and the other portents scream it… but it is not clear. The prospect can’t be picked out. So another path must be taken. If we cannot find the flower to cut then all must know the scythe’s edge.’

Xilita began to shake her head.

‘You…’

‘Not just I,’ said the man. ‘You, bishop. The geothermal vaults, you have the authorising control.’

‘You cannot…’

Iacto blinked. The pain in his head was blindingly bright, and he had the sudden instinct to run, to get as far away from what he was seeing and hearing as he could.

‘The monastery will fall,’ said the bald man. ‘Darkness has come for it in this Season of Night. The fire will be a mercy, as much as a necessity, and mercy is a blessing in this age.’

Iacto flinched before he could stop himself. His arm twitched and brushed an embroidered hanging on the wall. A ripple passed through the fabric.

The man’s head jerked up. His eyes swept the dark as he rose, and Iacto was running for the chapel door, before he could even consider if it was a wise idea. Unseen, the man’s hand flicked out. Iacto felt something hit him in the back. He ran another two steps and then his legs folded as though they had been cut from underneath him. He fell, feeling coldness and lightness spread through him in the stretched time before he hit the floor. He was trying to breathe, hearing himself gasp, and feeling bubbles burst in his throat.

A hand gripped his shoulder and rolled him over. Iacto gasped and felt something splatter out of his mouth. The bald man looked down at him.

‘Who is he?’ he said, half glancing at Xilita. Iacto gasped again.

‘The abbot of one of the orders.’

The bald man nodded, and then reached down next to Iacto’s back and tugged. A wet noise squelched through the air. Pain exploded inside Iacto’s chest. The man held up a short throwing dagger of dark metal with a blade that broadened near the tip. It had no tines, and the man held it loosely, as though it was a feather.

Iacto tried to move, but pain and numbness were spreading through him.

‘No, don’t bring yourself more pain,’ said the man. ‘What you have heard means that you must die, but you have not earnt suffering.’ The man leant close enough that his voice became a whisper for Iacto alone. ‘Forgive me this,’ he said. ‘But salvation is always birthed in blood.’ And he stabbed the dagger up into Iacto’s chest.

Fourteen

The hawks glided ahead of Ninkurra, wings beating silently in the ship’s corridors, folding in shadow and stillness when they saw anything. It had taken time to find an officer with the correct uniform and access rings to pass through the doors she needed. She had not wanted one of the von Castellan household elite. Such select groups tended to be tight, and infiltration into them took a great deal of time and delicacy, and she did not have the luxury of either.

In the end she had settled on a first-line gunnery officer of middle rank, but with the starburst crest on her chest that marked her as senior cadre amongst the middle deck officers. That should mean she should have limited access to the command bastion. The officer had died slowly but without pain as the venom dart had shut down her nerve pathways one by one. Ninkurra had stripped the uniform and dumped the corpse in a crawl space. Then she had pulled the uniform over her bodyglove. Her shard-blade had slid into her belt at the base of her back under the uniform jacket. Her other weapons and equipment had gone into a roll made from her cloak. Hung over her shoulder on a length of cord, it looked like a kit bundle that any crewman might carry. The uniform did not fit properly, but it would pass so long as no one looked closely. So far no one had, but that might be about to change.

The door to the hoist she was making for was not guarded. She shifted her mental sight between the two hawks perched in the struts above it, and then approached. The control panel chimed as she presented the officer’s ring to it. Cogwork buzzed within. A light pulsed amber.

Despite herself, Ninkurra held her breath. This hoist would take her up into the Dionysia’s command levels, just two decks down from the medicae section. If she had selected her last victim poorly then there was a good chance that something would notice an attempt to access the hoist.

There was a low hiss of pistons and the double blast doors pulled wide. The hoist space beyond was a bare metal box, but free of the creep of rust and grime that marked the lower decks. Ninkurra stepped in and twitched the hawks off their perches in the piping above. They flitted within and settled amongst the latticework covering the ceiling.

She keyed the code for the exit point that the ensign had given her, and pressed the dead officer’s ring against the controls. Amber lights flickered for an instant and then flashed red.

Ninkurra raised the ring to try again. Blinking, she wondered if someone had found the corpse; if the officer’s clearance codes had been rescinded; if there was already a security servitor staring at a warning light on its console and reading an intrusion response.

‘Hold it!’ The voice echoed down the corridor. Feet rang on the metal decking. Ninkurra spiked her will into the hawks above her, as her hand slid around the pommel of her shard-blade. ‘Hold!’ She tensed, ready to snap the blade out and cut in a single movement.

A figure ran into sight and across the threshold.

‘My thanks,’ panted an officer in the black and red uniform of a household officer. The woman was breathing hard. Ninkurra relaxed the muscles poised to draw the blade, but kept her hand on the pommel behind her back.

The officer blinked, looked at the flashing red light on the hoist control panel, and then up at Ninkurra.

‘You put in the wrong code or did the ghost in the spirit decide to say no again?’

‘I…’ began Ninkurra.

‘No matter,’ said the household officer, and pressed her ring into the control panel. It went green. ‘Nothing has been the same in the last few days. I hear it’s something to do with the storm, like it followed us out into this backwater. Ghosts and system failures all over the place. Exit code?’

Ninkurra spoke it, and the officer punched it in, then her own. A second later the doors closed and the hoist began to lurch upwards.

‘What station are you reporting to?’ asked the officer, after a few minutes of clanking quiet.

‘Primary medicae,’ said Ninkurra.

The officer frowned.

‘Reporting for duty there, or reporting with malady?’

Ninkurra shaped her will and sent a barb out into the other woman’s mind. The officer flinched and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ asked Ninkurra.

‘Yes, just a pain.’

‘A lot of that recently,’ said Ninkurra, saying out loud something she had seen in the woman’s thoughts. ‘Since the last passage through the storm.’

‘Yes…’ said the officer, still blinking.

The hoist lurched to a halt. The control panel flashed amber, waiting for authorisation to open the doors.

‘Would you mind?’ asked Ninkurra, gesturing at the door. ‘I doubt the spirit has forgiven me yet.’

‘Yes…’ said the officer, wincing. ‘Yes, of course.’ She pressed the ring into the controls again. Lights snapped green and the doors opened. Ninkurra sent another pulse into the woman’s thoughts, so that she squeezed her eyes shut for long enough that the hawks could glide out of the doors. She stepped after them, paused, and looked back.

‘My thanks,’ she said. The officer nodded, still blinking with pain. Then the doors shut, and Ninkurra looked around at the heart of the von Castellan domain.

‘Do I need to be conscious?’ asked Cleander. Iaso paused and tilted her head, as though giving his question careful consideration.

‘No, you don’t, but part of what I am attempting is very delicate, and one of the few ways I will have of knowing if I have gone too far is if you tell me.’

‘If I really scream, you mean?’

‘If you like.’

‘Just one more time – is there any alternative to all this?’

‘The alternative of letting whatever your aeldari friends put in you continue to activate and do unknown things to your biology – yes, there is that alternative.’

He did not reply. He was face-down on a steel slab. Runnels ran across the polished metal. Presumably for blood. His face was stuck through a rubber-lined hole so that all he could see was the white tiled floor, and the coiled pipes of various chirurgical machines. Iaso had let him keep mobility in his face and vocal cords, but for the duration of the operation he would not be able to move another muscle. Even his breathing and heart would be stopped, those functions being taken up by the devices that ringed the theatre.

‘Ready?’ asked Iaso, looking down at him with her carbuncle eyes. She had set a mirror on a stand under the slab so that he could see her. He had a feeling it was supposed to be reassuring.

‘Why not?’ he said, and forced a grin.

‘Very well, last nerve infusion proceeding now.’ He saw a needle-tipped servo-arm extend over Iaso’s shoulder and then glide down. He felt it slide into his neck and then a sensation like ice water running down his spine. ‘Attaching sanguinary piping to vascular plugs now.’ He heard cables snap and lock into the socket plugs she had fitted into his side. ‘Injecting cardio paralysis venom… now.’

His heart stopped. For a second he had the sensation of feeling silence in his chest. The breath stopped in his throat. The low buzz of the machinery filled his senses. He had the strangest feeling that he was drowning, but without being underwater. A spike of panic filled him. Then the cables beneath him jerked, and he felt a new pulse fill his veins, stronger and clockwork regular.

‘So, now we begin,’ she said. And he felt the first razor cut down his back.

‘Mistress Viola…’ She heard the voice, and felt the clouds of her dream shift and billow. She was walking down the galley of ancestors, back home. They were looking down at her with stone and painted eyes. ‘Mistress Viola…’ said a portrait of Sisyphina von Castellan. The old woman’s eyes were stern, her face hard. ‘Viola!’

She came awake, head rising from the desk she had not left. Her rooms were a dim blur, the candle set above the desk a pool of wax around the nub of a wick.

Bal stood next to her, a glow-globe in his hand. The outer door to the chamber was ajar.

‘What is happening?’ she asked, blinking and trying to rise as the fog of her exhausted sleep pulled back from her thoughts.

‘A message,’ said Bal, ‘or at least, I think it is a message.’

‘From the surface, from Covenant?’

‘No,’ he said, and held out a loop of polished wire. A yellow finger bone and copper cogs were threaded on it. ‘A rating tried to get up to the household levels to give it to you two cycles ago. The guards sent him away, but took this off him. His squad sergeant found it a few hours ago and was showing it to Kynortas when I was in the household billets.’

Viola took it, staring as she forced her thoughts to quicken.

‘I recognised it,’ he said. ‘It’s one of the bangles worn by the void-speakers you went to talk to, isn’t it? But if someone tried to get it to you, it must mean something.’

‘It does,’ she said.

Then she stood, shrugging on her crimson coat. She was two strides to the door when she stopped, went back to her desk and pulled out a laspistol in a holster, which she buckled around her waist.

‘Are you armed?’ she asked.

‘Always,’ he replied, ‘but what–’

‘What was that idiot of a guard thinking!’ she snapped, striding towards the door. ‘Two cycles, a lot can happen in two cycles.’

‘What–’

‘We are going down to the lower decks. No logs, no one else is informed, no one. You are my army if I need it.’

‘Always,’ he said, catching her up as she stopped short of the main door to the chamber.

‘Good,’ she said, and tapped one of her rings against the wood-panelled wall. There was a soft thump of piston bolts withdrawing, and a section of the wall hinged outwards. A small, red glow-globe lit in the space beyond. Narrow spiral stairs plunged down into the dark. ‘I probably should have mentioned this,’ she said, and stepped through onto the stairs.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Bal, before she could take the second step. ‘It was a message, but what did the void-speakers mean by sending it to you?’

She looked at him for a second, and then held the thread of bones and cogs up.

‘It’s a lie-catcher. They are worn to prevent the bearer speaking falsely of what they have heard the iron-mother say.’ Bal opened his mouth, but she answered his question before he could ask it. ‘But given like this, to a friend, it is a warning. It means that there are ghosts and revenants walking the decks. It means that we have a hidden enemy here on the ship.’

The cry shuddered from Cleander’s mouth before he could bite it off. The smell of burning meat filled his nose again. He wanted to gag, but the instinct found only the dead end of blanked nerves and paralysed muscles.

‘Is the pain different from before?’ asked Iaso, her voice flat.

‘Yes…’ he hissed through clenched teeth. It was difficult to speak with the air flowing up his throat from one of the respiration machines.

‘How so? Please be exact.’

In the mirror positioned beneath his face he could see the medicae staring at something on one of the machines, the reflection of green numerals flowing over her eye lenses.

‘It… hurt… more.’

‘Hmmm… Localised or more general?’

‘Down… my… spine…’ he said. ‘Sharp… and… burning…’

‘Hmmm…’

‘What… does… that… mean?’

‘The alien device, for want of a better description, has fused with both your nerve sheath and areas of bone. It appears to be biological, or at least to mimic such a nature. In places it has… grown, branching along other pathways. I was reasonably sure, before, that it would be impossible to remove by excision – now I am certain of it.’ He heard the buzz of the chrome servo-skulls, and the hiss of the contraseptic mist they breathed over the open wound of his back. ‘I have been trying to selectively cut and burn sections of it. This has been… unsuccessful.’

Cleander could hear the puzzlement floating to the surface under the layer of control.

‘But… you… can… do… some… thing?’

‘I am less confident of that. You see, the… device has responded to what I have been doing. It is repairing, healing itself and you. It has taken a great deal to keep the incisions open. It is… it is not going to let go of you, and it is trying to heal you to protect itself. I have never seen–’

A door release chimed.

‘I ordered no interruptions,’ snapped Iaso. In Cleander’s mirror view of her, Iaso turned her head. He heard steps on the tiled floor from the far side of the theatre. ‘This is a–’ There was a sound like wings beating. Iaso yelled. One of the servo-skulls flew past her, towards the door, its chrome a blur. A shriek of tearing metal, and the sound of beating wings. Something dropped to the floor. Swift running steps, and he could hear Iaso scrabbling for something on one of the machines.

A sound like the wind turning pages of a book. A cry, high and shrill, and terrifying, and a wet thump of something hitting the tiled floor.

‘Quiet,’ said a female voice. ‘It will rip your throat out if you try to move or speak without being told to – understood?’ A pause. ‘Good. Tend to your arm, before you go into shock.’

He heard more steps coming closer. He tried to move, but he could not. The steady, mechanical rhythm of his breath and blood beat on. His eyes were wide, fixed on the mirror beneath him that was his only window to the rest of the world. There was a spray of bright, red blood across it, he noticed.

‘This is the Duke von Castellan?’ said the same cool, female voice. ‘Answer, or I will take a hand off him to keep yours company on the floor.’ Iaso must have nodded. ‘Is he conscious?’

‘Yes,’ said Iaso, her voice dry and rattling with shock. Cleander’s mind was racing. There were household guards nearby, but Iaso had ordered them to stay clear of the medicae bay while she operated. Iaso must have reached for a vox alarm, and…

The steps paused next to him. And then a face appeared in the mirror, looking down at him. Slim, hard, with eyes that held a touch of amusement.

‘Duke von Castellan, I hope you are well enough to talk.’

Viola lit the candle and placed it on the deck.

‘How long?’ asked Bal from behind her. He had kept at least one hand on a pistol ever since they had begun their descent to the lower decks.

Viola stood next to the wall and banged her fist on a pipe in a precise rhythm.

‘Not long,’ she said, turning back to the lifeward. He had donned a silvered infravisor. In the candlelight it reflected her own face.

‘You believe them?’ he asked, not looking at her but burning his gaze slowly across the dark distance of the tunnel. Pipes formed the curve of its walls, and its floor was a rusted grate. The smoke from the candle rose in a stuttering plume. Viola could smell the synth-scents laced into its tallow. ‘I mean that a hidden enemy could be on the ship?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Tens of thousands of people, thousands of miles of passages, dead spaces and holds, there is more than enough space for someone to hide, and then there is…’ her voice trailed off. In her head the cascades of people and possibilities flowed and branched.

‘What?’

‘Betrayal,’ she said, ‘the chance that we have a traitor amongst us.’

‘You think that likely?’

‘It has happened before – trade wars and intra-family disputes. We have seen our share of assassins and saboteurs.’

‘How would they have got aboard?’

‘The kind of enemies we have can afford to play long games.’

A tapping rang along the pipes. Bal’s pistols were in his hands. Viola raised a hand, listening, and then tapped on the pipe in reply. Silence fell again, and then a figure shuffled silently into the light of the candle.

‘Mistress,’ croaked elder Yahdah, kneeling. Shards of metal clinked as she moved.

Viola held out the loop of cogs and bones.

‘What doom has the iron-mother spoken?’ she asked. ‘What have those that listen seen?’

Yahdah stood and took the lie-catcher. For a second she held it, her expression fixed as though she was listening, then she hung it on her staff.

‘There is one who is not a child of the iron-mother,’ said the elder void-speaker, ‘a woman who is an outer-ghost. She moves in the dark, and holds death in her hand. Swift and quick. Her scent and sound is of one from beyond the mother’s skin. Winged beasts follow her. She has killed others of the iron-mother’s children. She seeks ways up to the mistress’ domain. This we have heard.’

Viola felt herself go cold.

‘You know where she is now?’

Yahdah shook her head.

‘Not for one cycle. We sent a warning, but you did not come, and she became air and dust. We listened, though, and the bones of the iron-mother brought us her words as she gave pain to one of your servants. She seeks one called Gyrid, but the servant knew nothing of that name.’ The cold in Viola’s mind and gut became ice. Yahdah lifted a hand and pointed up to the pipe-tangled ceiling. ‘But he knew of the master, of your brother-kin, and told the outer-ghost the path to reach him.’

‘Cleander…’ she breathed. Inside, she could feel panic rising even as will and conditioning forced it into a side channel of her thoughts. ‘She is going after Cleander.’

The old woman bowed her head again. ‘I have spoken all that has been seen and heard.’

Viola was still for a moment, and then bowed her head.

‘My thanks is without measure, honoured elder,’ she said, then straightened, turned, and within a step she was running. This deep in the hull she was out of vox range of the rest of the crew. It might already be too late. Bal caught her up within two strides.

‘Guard yourself, mistress,’ called the elder void-speaker from behind them as they ran. ‘The voice speaks of shadows, of ghosts who have crossed the outer dark and returned with false faces – guard yourself…’

Ninkurra looked up at Cleander von Castellan’s face. It was pale, the beard ill-kempt, and the empty left eye socket made it seem unbalanced. She thought of the details in the files she had listened to as she began this mission. The man looking back at her did not seem the shadow of the deeds and mistakes he had committed.

‘This is going to be a simple transaction, duke,’ she said. ‘You are going to tell me where the woman called Enna Gyrid is on this ship, and how to reach her. And for that you can spare your own life and the lives of anyone else you care to mention.’

Von Castellan smiled. The breath came from his lips in mechanical thumps and gulps.

‘I… will… tell… you… what… you… can… do…’

She listened to each, slow word of the invective that followed, and then she returned his smile and stood.

The Duke von Castellan lay face down on a chirurgical slab. The skin and flesh of his back had been expertly split and pared back from the bone of his spine and the base of his skull. A chrome servo-skull still remained hovering above the open wound, spraying a mist of contraseptic over the red flesh. Its twin lay on the floor close to the door where one of her hawks had ripped it from the air. She frowned at the exposed spine. Translucent, silver threads tangled through the meat around the vertebrae, threading in and out of the bones.

‘This looks delicate,’ she said. ‘Something best approached with care, and expertise.’ She looked down at the mirror reflection of his face, and brought her shard-blade up next to her cheek, so that he could see it. ‘The records of your life paint a picture of someone who serves himself above all, unless he has no choice. I hope that picture does not turn out to be inaccurate.’

She lowered the tip of the blade towards the exposed vertebrae.

‘Go… F–’ he began.

‘Stop!’

Ninkurra paused and looked over to where the medicae lay on the floor. Blood from the severed stump of her arm spattered her teal robes, and her already pale face was almost parchment white.

‘Stop, you don’t need to do that. I can give you what you want.’

‘Iaso… no!’ gasped von Castellan.

‘Quiet, duke,’ said Ninkurra, and brushed the back of the shard-blade on his shoulder. She looked at the medicae who must be called Iaso, and raised an eyebrow. ‘You know where Enna Gyrid is on this ship?’

‘Yes,’ said Iaso. ‘She is in a cryo-suspended coma – the tech-priest needed my help to ensure she was stable. I know where she is being kept.’

‘And you can access that area?’

‘I am the Medicae Primus, of course I can.’

Ninkurra smiled, and allowed the hawk on Iaso’s chest to release its talons from her flesh.

‘Get up and get yourself clean.’

‘Iaso…’ said von Castellan. ‘Don’t…’

‘I am sorry, my duke,’ said Iaso, standing gingerly. Ninkurra noticed that the medicae had already sealed the stump of her hand with synth-flesh spray, and a sanguinary clamp ringed her wrist. ‘But as I said before, my oath is to preserve your life, even if that contradicts your wishes.’ She looked at Ninkurra. ‘May I at least close him up? He is chemically paralysed. He will not be able to move.’

Ninkurra paused for a second and then nodded.

‘Quickly, and if he shows any sign of suddenly being able to leap up, he dies first.’

Iaso nodded, and moved to the table and began her work. Ninkurra watched the flow and surge of emotion and thought on the surface of the medic’s mind. The woman was telling the truth. Ninkurra watched as the arms of the chirurgical array spun over the duke’s back, stitching skin back together under Iaso’s single-minded guidance. After a few minutes, Iaso turned.

‘Ready?’ asked Ninkurra.

Iaso nodded.

One of the psyber-hawks flittered across the room and settled onto the folded armatures above the Duke von Castellan. Ninkurra formed an imperative and poured it into the creature’s mind.

‘Understand,’ she said to Iaso, ‘that if I die then it will rip his throat out and dump enough venom into him that he will be dead before anyone can stop it. If he moves – he dies. If anyone enters this room – he dies.’

‘I understand,’ said Iaso.

‘Good,’ said Ninkurra, folding the shard-blade with a snap of her wrist. ‘Then let’s go.’

A candle flared to light, first one, then a second, and then more, until a ringed candelabra hung in the black. Enna watched as the flames grew. The light pushed outwards, painting details as it passed: a corridor with white and red tiled floor and walls; tapestries hanging from the edge of a high ceiling, their colours faded by time; word-covered skulls stacked in narrow niches. Idris stood in the middle of the corridor, frozen in mid-step.

Beside her stood a thin girl in a hessian smock. She was tall, slim and young, yet no child. She was striding to keep up with Idris, her eyes caught in the moment of glancing up at the inquisitor. Enna looked at the young woman, and her own eyes were a mirror of the confusion she saw there.

‘That is me…’ she breathed. ‘But when I was that young I was still in the margin gangs on Stilbe. Idris did not find me there until…’

‘I doubt you have ever been to Stilbe,’ said Mylasa, stepping into sight. Her bodyglove had become layered armour enamelled in the colour of new vine leaves. ‘I am guessing that Idris took those memories from one of the other Renewed. The mental grafting is exquisite, but they are as false as the rest. This is the start of the truth.’ She folded her arms, the plates of metal and ceramic clacking together. ‘I cannot be sure where this is, because you were never sure either,’ said Mylasa into the silence.

‘I was not born here then? This is not where I am from?’

Mylasa shrugged. ‘Wherever it was, or is, you were a guest there for some time. Someone left you here as a child. Maybe to keep you safe…’

Enna turned, looking over the frozen image. The white and red tiles covering the floor were triangles. Something about them made her think of teeth. A mass of iron chains hung from a hook in the corridor wall, like a coat hung up on a peg. Lead weights hung from the chains. Enna could see images of saints and angels moulded into the grey metal. She reached out to touch one in the shape of a serene face, and then stopped, her fingers an inch away.

‘I can’t… remember… I have no idea where I am.’ She touched the lead face hanging from the chain. ‘But it feels… familiar.’ She looked at Mylasa. ‘Is there more?’

‘Let’s watch, shall we?’

Idris’ foot completed its frozen stride with a dull clack as it touched the stone floor.

‘Who are you?’ asked the image of the girl who was Enna, hurrying to keep up with the inquisitor.

‘I am the person who has come to take you out of here,’ said Idris without looking around.

‘Did he send you? Where is he, is he waiting for us?’

Idris’ eyes seemed to pinch tighter for an instant, lines of shadow forming in the youthful face.

‘Close by,’ she said.

Enna watched herself stop, caution stilling her steps and tensing her muscles.

‘You are lying. He is not here. Who are you?’

Idris pivoted, face controlled, eyes focused.

‘You are right. He will never be coming back for you.’ The pair paused, gazes locking. ‘But I am here, and you need to trust me. I have been looking for you for a very long time.’

The memory of Enna shook her head.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. Her eyes were bright and wide.

‘I am called Idris. And you? Do you have a name?’

The girl Enna nodded.

‘Only the one he gave me.’

Idris frowned, then gave a small smile.

‘Of course,’ she said, as though to herself. ‘And what name did he give you?’

The girl who was Enna shrugged.

‘He called me Revelation.’

The word echoed out. The walls of the memory blurred and stretched. Light spun and reversed to shadow. Enna staggered as the word rolled on and on through her, picking up memories and turning them over like pebbles in a storm wave.

Revelation…

Revelation…

‘You are looking for revelation,’ said a hermit in the underworld beneath Iago.

‘What is this revelation?’ asked Covenant.

‘I cannot tell you…’

‘Come and see…’

‘Revelation…’ muttered Josef. ‘That has a habit of meaning answers we didn’t want to find.’

And through the swirl and crash of memories, Enna saw the girl that was called Revelation shake her head as she looked up at Inquisitor Idris.

‘I am not coming with you,’ she said.

‘It was not a request,’ said Idris, and her eyes were suddenly black holes into lightless depths. And Enna screamed, Idris’ mind punching into the thoughts of the girl she had been, as it dragged her into the dark and silence.

AND SO WE ARE BROUGHT TO SILENCE

Acia woke on a bed of ashes. It had settled over her in a thin blanket and fell from her as she raised her head. The tunnel was silent, and the cry of her waking echoed through stillness. The light of torches that had followed her through her dreams was gone, and now there was just the true and undiluted dark of this passage beneath the earth. The silence pushed in on her until she found herself about to cry out again, just to hear a sound other than the beat of her heart. Then she stopped herself. The image of the torch bearers running towards her with cries of ‘Witch’ bloomed briefly in her mind’s eye.

She crawled forwards until her hand touched the hard edge of what must have been an iron truncheon, the metal twisted and fused by heat. She felt herself shiver, and then a wave of nausea drove her back down to retch on the floor. The silence seemed to press closer. The world was spinning.

She had to get up, had to move. But where could she go now? There was no home waiting for her, no comfort, just running through the dark, with the cries of hate behind her. She should just lie down again. She should–

She forced herself to stand. Her head swam. She couldn’t even see her hand in front. She would step until she reached a wall, and then work her way along it until–

Something swooped out of the dark. Talons and needles punched into her throat, as wings beat about her head. Ice and numbness poured through her. She tried to call out but she was falling back to the ash-covered floor.

Light filled the tunnel. Blinding white.

‘Prospect down,’ said a woman’s voice from beyond the light. ‘She is secure.’

‘Conscious?’ asked a man’s voice.

‘Oh, yes.’

Wings beat above Acia, and then whatever it was that had hit her was swooping away behind the light.

‘Could you get that null creature away now?’ asked the woman’s voice. ‘I am barely managing to keep my stomach down.’

‘No,’ said a second man’s voice. ‘I think it best that he stays for now.’ The speaker stepped closer, moving in front of the beams of light. Panic was flooding Acia, but something was squeezing the thoughts small inside her head. The man squatted down next to her. He wore brushed steel armour under a red cloak. His hair was iron grey, and a beard framed his sharp face. It was the man from her dream before the torch bearers came.

‘Can she speak?’ he asked, looking at her.

‘In…’ croaked Acia. ‘Inquisitor…’

The man tilted his head, and she recognised surprise on his face.

‘You see, Memnon,’ he said without looking around, ‘she knows.’ He stood, looking down into her eyes. ‘Give her another dose, full unconsciousness. After all she has been through she deserves to sleep.’

Part Three

THE VOICE OF GODS

Fifteen

Cleander bit off the scream. He could see the reflection of the hawk perched on the arms of the chirurgeon array above him. Its head rotated slowly. He watched it for a second, just to be sure that it hadn’t noticed his arm twitch.

The sensations had started sometime after the woman had left with Iaso. First had come a feeling like cool air breathing across his skin. Then had come warmth, spreading out from his core. Then had come the pain. Bright pain, shooting up and down his limbs as though razor wire was being pulled through his veins. It had come so fast that he had instinctively balled his fists before he remembered that he couldn’t… and his fingers had twitched.

At first he had not believed it, then, carefully, he had tried to move them and felt them tap the steel top of the slab. The hawk had shifted its claws above him, and he had gone still. The pain had still been flowing and spreading through him.

His mind began racing. He remembered Iaso, bending over him as the needles worked to stitch his skin back together. For an instant he had been shielded from the woman’s view. There had been a prick in his arm, so quick that he had barely noticed it. Now, bit by bit, control of his body was returning.

Then he felt himself take a breath. The machine pumping air into his lungs chimed a warning. The hawk’s head twitched. Cleander froze. The bird did not move. Carefully, he matched his breathing to the pump-thump of the machine. He was going to have to think very carefully about what to do next. He had no reason to doubt the woman’s threat that the bird would kill him if he moved. He also had no idea how long he had until he would be able to move more than a finger, let alone move fast enough to live. Once whatever Iaso had injected him with restarted his heart, he doubted the machine currently pumping his blood through him would be quiet for long.

Slowly, very slowly, he tested his fingers one after another.

‘Vox, work, just work!’ she shouted as she ran. Blurred data scrolled through her augmetic eye, cutting in and out. The vox-bead in her ear shrieked a wall of static back at her as she and Bal ran down the passages of the lower decks. The doors to a hoist came into view as they spun around a corner.

‘Your brother is guarded?’ asked Bal. He was barely breathing hard despite the fact that they had not slowed as they ran and climbed from the lower to middle decks.

‘If someone can get onto the ship, they can get to him,’ gasped Viola, still trying to spark a vox or data link.

‘And this Gyrid?’

They reached the hoist doors. Viola rammed her rings into the control panel. Lights sputtered and blinked. She swore again.

‘She is a prisoner on command deck four-five-three. She is being held for Inquisitor Covenant.’ She punched the controls. ‘She is important.’

‘And your brother?’

Viola did not reply. In the cold pathways of her mind, the chances of Cleander still being alive if the intruder had reached him were draining to nothing by the second. Without the vox, she could not raise the household troops. Without that, then she had to follow the path of duty, as she always had done. She had to save Enna Gyrid even if that left Cleander to an unknown fate.

The lights on the panel fizzed and flashed green. Bal nodded and stepped back out of the hoist doors. Viola looked at him, puzzlement briefly replacing panic.

‘What are you–’

‘Go for your brother,’ he said. ‘I will make sure that your prisoner is safe.’

‘Wait, what…’ she began.

‘You were going to her,’ he said. The doors began to close. ‘Because that is your duty, but serving you is mine.’

Viola opened her mouth to speak. The doors closed, and the hoists lurched upwards. The last sight she had of the lifeward was of him breaking into a run, pistols in his hands.

‘This way,’ said Iaso, turning through a hatch. Ninkurra pushed her mind into the medic’s but felt no deception. The hawk glided through the opening. In her mind Ninkurra saw the dark passage through the bird’s eyes. It was deserted. ‘The deck around where they are keeping her has been cleared of security. Once we are inside that cordon there will be no guards.’

‘She is not guarded?’

Iaso hesitated, and Ninkurra felt a spike of emotion on the surface of the medicae’s mind.

‘How is she guarded? Answer, or your duke will be dead by the time you get halfway through a lie.’

‘There is a woman, a former Sister of the Adepta Sororitas – she was set guard over the prisoner, and…’ Iaso trailed off.

‘And what else?’

‘The witch might have been sent to interrogate her.’

‘That is all?’

‘That is enough,’ said Iaso.

Ninkurra smiled and shoved the medicae through the hatch.

‘Then it is good that I have your help,’ she said.

The hawk shifted and ruffled its feathers. Cleander froze. The machine-beat of his heart was still strong, but in his chest he had felt the first tremor of his own heartbeat. It had made him feel sick, a discordant rhythm pushing against the blood syphon’s pulse. The machine had chimed a low warning, and that had made the bird move. He didn’t know how long he would live if the blood machine went to war with his own heart, and he didn’t know what would happen if he tried to move.

He closed his eyes and tried to focus on keeping his breath in time with the machines. He thought of the thing coiled around his spine.

Even if I live now, for how long after? he thought. Then felt a bitter smile pull at his cheeks. Too long. Too long, you fool.

Carefully he began to tense the muscles of his legs and arms.

‘Now,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Now, and then forever.’

He took a deeper breath. The machines chimed.

+Someone is coming.+ Mylasa’s voice snapped through Severita’s thoughts.

‘Who?’ asked Severita.

+I… I don’t know… I don’t have the energy to look. Not now…+

Severita moved towards the chamber door, sword in hand.

Thick frost had covered the walls and ceiling. Black icicles hung from pipes. The cryo-machines were coughing as frost choked their exhausts. Only Enna’s casket remained clear of ice. The metal of its frame glowed dark red with heat. The only other light was the prayer candle Severita had lit and placed in front of her as she knelt and prayed.

No one should have been coming to this chamber unless Covenant had returned.

She reached the door, drew her bolt pistol, levelled it at the closed portal, and began a fresh prayer in the silent storm of her skull.

He who watches, be my sight…

He who sees, open my eyes…

He who judges, guide my hand…

‘With me!’ shouted Viola, running, as bulkheads slammed open ahead of her. Two household troopers ran with her. Armoured, helmed and visored. The two guards in the companionway in front of her hesitated for a second. ‘Move!’ roared Viola. The two guards fell in with the two she had found one deck down. The vox was still a mess of growling static.

The doors to the primary medicae wing loomed in front of her as she rounded a corner. Her gun was in her hand. She should have a cadre of troops with her. She should have gone to the bridge, taken stock, calculated, evaluated.

‘Anything unknown is hostile,’ she said, as she reached the doors. ‘Shoot to kill.’ The four troopers’ weapons armed with a clatter as she hammered her rings into the override panel.

Ninkurra could feel the psychic pressure building. The hawk on her shoulder flinched, beak open in a silent cry. The passage was wide and dark, but she could see through the bird’s eyes. Iaso stumbled and Ninkurra caught her and pulled her on. Frost marked the door they were making for. The air smelled of burning plastek and roses. She could taste the blood and storm charge.

‘Open the door,’ she hissed at Iaso, and shoved her forward. The soft fabric of her cameleoline cloak folded her into the dark as she stepped back. The hawk glided from her shoulder into the dark above. Her pistol was in her left hand, her shard-blade in her right.

‘It’s sealed from the inside,’ said Iaso.

‘Then get them to open it.’

The medicae did not move for a moment, and then reached for the speaker control next to the frosted door.

‘What’s next?’ said Enna. Mylasa looked at her, surprise creasing the perfect lines of her face. Enna shook her head. ‘Come on, let’s be done with it. What revelation do you have to show me next? Something before this? A child crying alone in a cradle? Abandonment? A mother screaming, alone as I was born and she died? Whatever it is, let’s start now. Why pause? The truth must be close. Let’s hack it out right now.’ She bit the last words off. She was almost vibrating with anger.

Mylasa looked at her for a long moment. Enna stared back at her. The image of the psyker wore a simple green robe, its hood hanging around her shoulders. Her hair curved around her neck in a long plait. After a few seconds she found that she wanted nothing more than to punch the psyker’s face until it was bloody. She let out a breath, and looked away. The space around her was grey and depthless. Again she had the feeling that there was someone standing directly behind her.

‘Do you want answers?’ Mylasa asked.

‘Do I want answers?’ She laughed. The image of the psyker actually flinched. ‘After all this time…’ She laughed again, and the grey air seemed to flex. ‘After all you have done to me, after all the choices that have been taken from me, you ask me that?’

‘This is not a universe that allows choice, Enna, and if it does, that choice is an unkindness.’

Mylasa turned away and looked into the grey mist around them. Enna noticed that there were shadows in the distance, as though a diffuse light was seeping out of the distance and washing past things standing just out of sight.

‘We can’t…’ began the psyker and then paused. ‘I can take us no further alone. Everything up to this point was buried deep by Idris and the Renewed. But there is more, and it is buried deeper still. Too deep for my skill and strength.’ She turned back to Enna. ‘I could try, but I think it might kill you, and I have a feeling it might do the same to me.’

Enna looked at Mylasa and then the grey land around.

‘If Idris did not hide those deep memories from me, then who did?’

‘I am not certain.’

‘But you have an idea – you always have an idea, don’t you?’

Mylasa smiled sadly.

‘You. I think you did this, Enna. I think when the Renewed and Idris began their work on your mind, you hid things from them, walled them off and shut them out so strongly that even with all of their craft they did not find them.’

Enna opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, and shook her head.

‘You showed me all of this so that you could ask me to help you go further, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Mylasa.

Enna gave a snort of laughter.

‘But how could I have done that? An assassin taken by Idris as a child and made into a weapon. How does a child or a weapon do what you describe?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mylasa.

Enna held herself still and quiet, and then looked at the shadows in the mist.

‘What do I do?’ she asked eventually, turning towards Mylasa. ‘Surely I don’t just–’

Mylasa was not there. Light flooded her eyes, blinding. The mist and shadows were gone. The scene that replaced it was both smudged and sharp. Patches of colour clumped together like areas of a half-finished artist’s canvass. A man stood above her, the sharp features of his face clear above the blurred impression of brushed steel armour. A red cloak hung from his shoulders, and a grey-flecked beard ran down the edge of his jaw. His hair was drawn back in a ponytail behind his head. The tri-barred ‘I’ sigil of the Inquisition was pinned to a fold of the cloak.

‘You may leave us,’ said the inquisitor, his voice deep and resonant. His dark eyes glittered as he looked down at Enna. She was seeing this memory as she had lived it, she realised, through a child’s eyes.

‘Of course, lord inquisitor,’ said the voice of someone she could not see.

There was a pause and then the man smiled at her.

‘Hello, again,’ he said. ‘You look less hungry than when we last met, at least.’

A moment of silence.

The man’s hands appeared. His fingers held a disc of brass and bone the width of a small eating plate. Symbols, lenses and crystals covered its surface. A series of rings divided the disc, and he moved them each in turn, aligning elements of the design, eyes hard with focus. After a moment his hands stilled. He looked at the disc for a second and then lowered it.

‘What is that?’ said a voice. Enna flinched at the sound. It was her voice, younger and higher, but still her voice.

‘My knowledge of the Monastery of the Last Candle is not detailed,’ said the inquisitor, ‘but I thought that curiosity is not encouraged amongst its children.’

‘But I am not part of the monastery.’

The man looked at her for a long moment.

‘I am an inquisitor,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I know.’

‘Do you know what that means?’ he asked.

‘It means that everyone should be frightened of you.’

The lines around the man’s eyes crinkled, but his face remained still.

‘But you are not afraid, it seems.’

‘Should I be?’

The smile was brief, like a flash of light in the dark.

‘Very much so. Do you know what this is?’ He held up the disc of bone and brass.

‘No.’

‘I must admit the question was largely rhetorical. There are very few people who would be able to begin to give you an answer, and almost all of them would be wrong. It’s an etheric auspectrum, or at least that is what some call it. It was created by a madman, and is used to measure the influences of imperceptible forces on the flow of cause and effect.’

‘It tells the future?’

‘It tells me what the present means. The future is a different matter.’

‘That’s witchcraft, isn’t it?’

‘Just so,’ he said.

He paused and the disc disappeared. A second later his hands re-appeared holding a small package wrapped in soft, pale leather. He knelt down so that his face was now level with her. He set the packet down, and carefully unfolded it. Beneath the leather was a layer of purple velvet, and within that a stack of rectangular, crystal wafers, each the length of an open palm along their longest side. He fanned them out with a gesture. A pattern of eagles and serpents wheeled and squirmed in gold and silver on the back of each wafer.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘choose one.’

‘What is it?’

‘A conduit for the will of the Emperor. Some call it His tarot.’

‘What does it do?’

‘It shows us things we cannot see.’

Silence filled the pause, and then a small hand – that must have been her own – reached out towards the tarot wafers. The eagles and serpents flickered as the fingers hovered above them. Then the hand darted down and touched a wafer. The design on the back froze, feathers and scales suddenly red with blood, broken wings tumbled across the crystal. Her hand snapped back as though burned.

The bearded man’s features had become a mask.

‘Turn it over, please,’ he said softly. The hand appeared again, hesitated, and then flicked the wafer over. An enthroned figure sat on the crystal surface. Its robes were black, and it held a silver lightning bolt in its left hand, a jade chalice in its right. A rayed halo of silver flickered around its head. A blue heaven, spotted with stars, turned behind it. Each detail was sharp and real, seeming a thing with dimension and life and, at the same time, a painting. Only the figure’s face remained hidden, the features a shadow inside a deep hood. ‘The Emperor,’ said the man, softly.

‘You sound scared,’ said Enna’s voice. ‘Why?’

He breathed out and smiled, but his eyes were still on the image on the crystal sliver.

‘What is your name?’ he asked at last.

‘Acia,’ she said.

‘Suitable for a pilgrim, but not for you. You shall have a new name from now on.’ He shook his head, and gathered up the spread of crystal wafers. ‘You shall be called Revelation.’

‘Revelation… Does that mean something?’

‘Everything means something.’

The last word seemed to linger in Enna’s ears as the image of the man faded, and then it was just a dimming echo running off into the distance, and Enna felt the dream of tears on her cheeks, but didn’t know why she wept.

Sixteen

Koleg followed Covenant as the inquisitor strode towards the doors of the House of Concordance. Shouts and cries from connected passages and stairwells echoed up the long corridor. The panic was rolling through the monastery like thick smoke now. Parts of it were alight and burning. They had heard cries and screams from inside the inner cloisters as they had come from the bridge. Koleg knew panic and fear. It was his speciality, a weapon that he had been trained to create and use, and though his alerted mind did not let him experience its results, he understood like a falcon understood the winds it rode. And he could tell that terror was rising faster than it could be contained or outrun.

‘Lord Covenant!’ came a call from by the door into the House of Concordance. Epicles hobbled out of the sally door beside the main entrance, leaning on a cane. Covenant had the spinning brass device out again, his eyes fixed on it as he strode towards Epicles. The arbitrators on duty came to attention.

‘Lord Covenant, there is something you should know,’ said Epicles. Covenant reached the doors. The scanning beams of the servo-skulls behind the arbitrators flicked over him and Koleg.

‘Speak,’ he said to Epicles.

‘I said something to the abbot who was searching the records, I think I said too much. He left, and–’

‘It does not matter now. It is coming, Epicles. And when the prospect rises, that is where the Triumvirate will be.’ They entered the chamber. Orsino was standing by a block of machinery projecting a blurred hologram of tunnels and passages. Soot and blood marked her armour, and the armour of the arbitrators at her side. Glavius-4-Rho stood beside her. His hooded head twitched up as Covenant approached.

‘This place cannot be held,’ said Orsino, turning without preamble. Her face was pale. ‘It is coming apart. The red pilgrims have breached the inner cloisters in several places. If you intend a last stand and martyrdom, then that’s the only wish I think you will have granted here.’

‘The prospect is emerging. They will be here,’ said Covenant, halting with them and holding up the brass and crystal device. ‘Epicles, begin the divinations.’

The old astropath trembled and nodded. The smell of smoke was already threading the air. Everything in the chamber seemed to have become still, a moment balanced on the edge of the future.

Glavius-4-Rho unplugged the cable connecting him to the monastery’s communications system.

‘Communications are failing across the monastery structure,’ he said, his machine voice low. ‘My last summation from available data is that the death/life termination rates in the drifts and outer cloisters are… near total. Fire is spreading, and the geothermal governors are failing.’

‘Everything will freeze or burn,’ said Orsino, looking from the magos to Covenant. ‘The dominion of man left to the pyre.’

Covenant met her gaze.

‘The Triumvirate is here. This is a moment that cannot be allowed to pass to them.’

‘And everything else is irrelevant? The rule of law, the survival of anything or anyone else?’

‘Yes,’ said Covenant.

Orsino looked at him for a long moment. Koleg noticed the lines around her eyes pinch tighter.

‘You are more like Argento than you think.’

For a second, Koleg thought he saw something move under the still mask of Covenant’s face. Then he nodded.

‘Get every remaining portion of our force together. The future is coming and we shall be ready.’

Shouts from by the door made them all turn. The arbitrators had a woman in a robe held in a double arm lock. She was breathing hard with pain, but her eyes were defiant. Koleg recognised her as the assistant to the abbot who had been reviewing the monastery’s records. She was called Claudia, he remembered.

‘My lords, she says–’ began one of the arbitrators.

‘Inquisitor!’ she called. ‘I have knowledge that you desire.’

The arbitrators shifted their grip and Claudia screamed. Covenant raised a hand.

‘Let her speak,’ he said as they lowered her.

‘I want a promise first,’ she sneered. Orsino flinched forwards, but Covenant stilled her with a look.

‘Speak your price,’ he said.

‘Covenant–’ began Orsino.

‘Commerce is faster than principle when you have no time, and we have none.’ He looked back at Claudia. ‘Speak.’

‘Abbot Iacto, the master of my order…’ she paused. ‘For the first time in his life he has done something stupid…’ The woman shook her head, her eyes for a moment looking at something that she alone saw. ‘Save him,’ she said at last. ‘Give your word that you will save him and I will tell you what we found.’

Covenant held her gaze for a second and then nodded.

‘You have my word,’ he said.

The dust rolled through the dream, great billowing walls of grey dust. It was there in every breath, there gritting eyes when they blinked. The dreamer coughed and a galaxy of burning stars exploded through him. He staggered and fell to his knees. Sharp stones ground beneath him. Edges and points dug into his skin. He reached down and picked up a handful of stones and lifted them up so that they were in front of his eyes. He blinked and the dust flowed and sucked into his eyes. Then it cleared, and he saw. They were not stones in his hands; they were bones, broken and dry.

He gave a muffled cry as he dropped them, and was about to rise when the dust cloud peeled back in front of him. A land lay before him. No, not a land, a city, but a city like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed. Towers and battlements and domes rose like mountain ranges. Statues as tall as cathedral spires reached up to the shrouded sky. The dust wind blew through the avenues and peeled over the faces of the statues and battlements.

‘Help…’ He turned at the voice. A man sat on a stone chair three paces behind him. The chair was plain and grey, its surface pitted by the wind. The man that sat on it wore grey, the fabric so worn that it seemed as though the dust had settled in a thin skin on top of his wasted flesh and bones. There were wounds in the flesh, too, scabbed and blackened gashes that wept slow tears of pus. ‘I… Help…’ the enthroned man said again, shifting his head, shivering with fatigue.

‘I…’ began the dreamer. ‘I… who are you? What are you? This is a dream, isn’t it?’

‘It…’ coughed the figure on the throne. ‘It can’t go on. I…’

‘What can’t go on? What are you talking about?’ he asked, but the wasted figure only shook its head. Then he laughed and somewhere behind the curtain of dust a growl of thunder answered. ‘Why am I even speaking? You’re just a sleep phantom. This is a dream, and somewhere…’ His words faltered. He blinked, pain and panic flashing through his eyes. ‘I am dying…’ Iacto said softly. ‘I am bleeding out on the floor of a chapel.’ He laughed again, but the sound was low and cold and the thunder did not answer. ‘All that time, all those years climbing in rank and manoeuvring for power, and this is the end I was reaching for – a fever dream on the edge of an abyss.’

‘I…’ said the figure in the stone chair, and raised its hand.

The city around them moaned as the wind pulled the dust of powdered bones through its streets.

‘Iacto.’

His head jerked around. The figure in the stone chair was looking at him, gaze steady, eyes clear in its wasted face. It held out its hand, skeletal fingers open. The figure twitched and for an instant Iacto felt as though its pain had whipped through him too. He gasped and staggered, falling to his knees.

Black voids of pain and fatigue, and endless screaming nightmare opened in him, night eternal and dark and laughing, and he was alone, alone as the dark and cold closed in, growling like wolves hungry for meat in winter, and he could hear the rattle and hiss of them and hear their breath as they licked the air, and he felt the weakness in his limbs as he rose to beat them back.

Then the pain fled, and the dream was of the dead city once more.

‘Why?’ he said, at last, and the wind snatched the word away. ‘There are other people, other people dying. Other people who are better. Other…’

The wind was rising. Dust had swallowed the city. Somewhere in the distance beyond this dream his heart was beating the last of his blood. He looked up, trying to breathe, trying to stay alive.

The figure on the throne was a fading blur, its hand still held out.

‘Iacto,’ it said again.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout. He wanted to do anything but reach out to that hand. And he heard a question rise in him, the last question that he thought would come to his lips.

‘Will…’ He coughed. ‘Will it mean something?’

‘Please…’

Iacto laughed one last time and reached up to take the proffered hand.

Josef heard the breath gasp from his chest.

‘Josef?’

The monastery was as a mountain of dark stone and pinprick light above him. He tried to take another step towards it. The snow-swirled sky rolled over above him, and the snow covered ground caught him.

‘Josef!’

Agata was kneeling next to him, glancing between him and the surrounding dark. The snow seemed still in the sky above him. He could hear a voice calling. They had come so close, so close, just a little further, and they would have been at the door, just a little…

‘I am sorry,’ Iaso had said.

He had felt cold breathe through him.

‘Thank you, Medicae Primus,’ he had said after a moment, and slid off the slab, and began to pull the top half of his robe back over his tattooed bulk. ‘Your service has been exemplary.’

Iaso’s head twitched.

‘What?’ he asked glancing at her. ‘Something wrong?’

‘Most in your position… it is more typical… You haven’t asked any of the questions I was prepared for.’

‘Are you sure? What can be done? Is there a way out of this? Those kind of questions, you mean?’

‘Yes, exactly those.’

‘Well?’

‘I do not follow – well, what?’

‘Well are there any good answers in there that I am missing out on?’

Iaso looked at him for a second and shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘There are things that can be done that might–’

‘Things that will cost what I do, for the chance of a few more days watching the sand drain down? Thank you, I know what that looks like, and no thank you.’ He gave a smile that he didn’t feel. ‘I am going to do anything but sit and wait. Besides, there are things that I need to do. You are new, so I am going to guess that Viola would not have recruited you if you were anything other than exemplary in skill and honour, so I will count on your oath that this is my concern and mine alone.’

Iaso had not moved for a second.

‘An inquisitor is like unto the God-Emperor. If he–’

‘He needs me,’ said Josef. ‘They need me, and they need me as a living soul not a dying man.’

She put a hand on his shoulder.

‘With respect, from what I have observed the inquisitor is little given to emotional attachment.’

‘That lie of his is why he needs me,’ he said, and shook her arm free. ‘That’s why they all need me. So I am going to be there for them.’

‘I am sorry, master preacher, but it is not that simple. You–’

‘Josef, just Josef, or Khoriv. And, yes, it is that simple.’

‘…Josef!’ Agata called him. The snow was falling on his face, touching his cheeks with frost fingers.

The Monastery of the Last Candle burned, and began to scream as the snow fell. Down in its roots, beasts that had begun as stray dogs and lost humans howled with the hunger of the starveling Neverborn stitched into their skin as they stalked the sepulchres and tunnels. Up and out the red pilgrims flowed, through the dormitories where prayers had long before become tears, and now became screams. Coals and candles were tipped into spreading pools of lamp oil, and the orange teeth of the inferno ate tapestries and cracked stained glass in its setting. Death began to gather souls in the thousands: from chambers where smoke and heat stole the air from lungs, and in shrines where unanswered prayers were cut with jagged knives. The screams and flames rose up into the night.

Seen from above, the heap of sacred buildings glowed like coals as the blaze began to seep out into the freezing dark. High above it all the sacred flame guttered on its high tower. Aurora light, red and bruised, began to flow across the bellies of the storm clouds and stain the falling snow.

Down beneath the Great Cathedral’s dome, Memnon stepped from the shadow of the door to the stairway that led down to the bishop’s sanctuary. Above him, the vault of the central nave’s roof spread from the tops of granite columns. The light of fires flickered across high stained-glass windows, lending light to the halos of saints. Between the pillars and beneath the glazed faces of martyrs, empty silence spread to welcome him.

Geddon had been waiting in the shadows and now scampered forwards to meet him. The auspextra’s slapping steps echoed on the tiled floor.

‘There has been a shift,’ she hissed without preamble. ‘It started three minutes ago across multiple etheric-spectra. Atmospheric and rational data area also fluctuating.’

‘The prospect–’

‘The readings though do not make sense,’ said Geddon, shaking her bulky head as though she had not heard him. ‘This is not a typical prospect. The wave forms are not synchronising, they are diverging – as though the manifestation was not a single event. As though it were–’

The cathedral’s main doors blew in. Stone, wood and polished metal scattered through the air.

A burst of gunfire ripped out of the dark, and tore Geddon’s head off. Electricity arced from the ruined machinery stacked on her shoulders as she fell. Memnon flinched back as the fire dragged onto him. Blinding light strobed around him, then blazed as heavy rounds slammed into air and exploded into fire and noise.

Koleg’s visor dimmed as the conversion field blazed around the target. The arbitrators were advancing between the pillars in pairs, firing as they moved. Star-bright light filled the nave. The sound of gunfire reached up to the ceiling and roared in echoes through the shredded dark.

Koleg rose and ran forwards, stripping the skeletal stock from the macrostubber as he moved. He did not need it now. Things were going to get close. His kill shot against the first target had been difficult, but he had made an error. He had not accounted for the other target having a protection field. At that distance they had not been able to tell which was the higher-priority target. That question was resolved now, at least.

‘Find and close the exits!’ came Orsino’s shout over the vox, as she limped in the wake of the running arbitrators. Glavius-4-Rho kept close behind her, supporting the figure of the astropath, Epicles. Last came the robed figure of the monk called Claudia. She had shrunk back behind the bulk of a pillar as the cacophony rose. ‘Keep firing, don’t give him a chance to react,’ called Orsino.

‘False pilgrim…’ came Covenant’s voice, rising to amplified thunder over the sound of gunfire.

The inquisitor had come forward with Koleg as they had set the snap ambush, and moved with him now. The inquisitor did not fire and the sword was still sheathed at his back. In his hand the brass and crystal device sung as it spun, faster and faster, blurring through symbols.

‘By the power of the Throne and the Master of Mankind, I charge you to submit to judgement,’ called Covenant as he strode forwards.

The lone man stood still for a second, a shadow behind the blazing halo of his conversion field. For a moment, the rhythm of gunfire slackened, and as the blaze of light around the man faded, Koleg saw him raise a hand to his mouth as though to blow a kiss. Dust billowed out and a sound that pulled all other sound to silence echoed out.

Koleg felt himself falter, and tasted burned spice in his mouth inside his mask. The nearest arbitrator to the man froze, shaking, in place.

And the dust poured out, spreading out and up, growing and twisting. Shapes uncoiled within it, grey and soft, shadow and ash. They hung in the air, folding and sliding for an instant that stretched like a pulled thread. Then they slid from out of being into incarnation. They were grey like the powder on a moth’s wing, or the fine ash sieved from a corpse-furnace. Wings thumped the air. Tentacles slid over the ground. Mouths opened in faces of dust and shrieked with thirst. They poured forwards as, above them, the eyes of glass saints blazed with the light of their burning sanctuary.

Seventeen

Alarms rang through the medicae wing. The hawk shrieked above Cleander and spread its wings. He shoved upwards with all his strength, and twisted. The bird dived, claws bared, beak wide in a shriek. His fist struck its wing as it beat the air. The bird jolted back. Cleander roared as the bones in his hand shattered. The hawk dived at him as he scrambled off the slab. His legs caught in the pipes still linked to his body and he pitched backwards, hand grabbing at the silver knives laid out next to the slab. The door to the theatre slammed open. He saw a blur of household uniforms as the bird came at him. The bird struck as his hand closed on a scalpel. Shouts filled the air.

He stabbed up. The point rammed through the bird’s breast. Claws raked his arm. The hawk’s head was thrashing from side to side. He could see its yellow eyes in its chrome skull.

‘Get back!’ Viola shouted from behind him.

The needles in the bird’s legs were extending, beads of milky venom growing like pearls at their tips. Cleander rammed it away. He felt the stitching down his spine rip. The bloody hawk beat its wings to try to catch the air. A cluster of las-bolts burned through it an instant before two shot rounds reduced it to shredded meat and torn feathers.

Cleander lay on the floor for a moment breathing hard, eyes closed. Then he rolled over, hands scrabbling at the pipes and tubes linked to him.

‘Turn these damned machines off before they kill me,’ he growled. Someone moved to obey. He grabbed hold of the side of the slab and began to pull himself to his feet.

‘What are you doing?’ said Viola.

‘A very serious person with a sword and another of these damned birds has taken Iaso and is after Enna…’ The world spun and swam around him. ‘I am going after her.’

‘Enna…’ Mylasa’s voice echoed out of the distance. Grey fog billowed around Enna as she turned. Towering shadows loomed and scattered through the murk. ‘Enna!’ The shout came from just behind her. She whirled and saw Mylasa standing an arm’s reach away. The image of the psyker was chalk-pale, the skin drawn over the bones, eyes sunken in pits of shadow. A frayed cloak of rough green fabric hung from her, flapping, dripping with water as though Mylasa was standing in a storm.

‘I saw…’ began Enna, the memory of the bearded inquisitor and the tarot wafer rising again, sharpening. ‘I saw someone. I was… He gave me a name.’

Mylasa was trembling, rain water pouring down her face.

‘I know, I saw. Enna, something is happening outside. I don’t know what but–’

‘You… You know something, don’t you?’ said Enna, feeling the truth of what she was saying as she spoke. ‘You recognised something in the memory, didn’t you?’

Mylasa was juddering in place, shivering. Her cloak billowed in a gust.

‘I can’t… You are too strong for me to be here…’

‘What did you see?’ shouted Enna. Mylasa was crumpling to the ground, as though bent by the wind. ‘Who was he?’

Mylasa looked up at Enna, gasping.

‘Argento,’ she said. ‘The inquisitor in your memory was Covenant’s master.’

Enna blinked. Around her the shadows of memories slouched forward.

‘Revelation… Acia… Revelation…’ they called in the high voices of a lost past.

‘Medicae Primus?’ asked Severita. Her gun was still aimed at the sealed door. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I am supposed to review the subject’s physical condition at regular intervals,’ said Iaso’s voice out of the vox-speaker.

Severita stilled a shiver. The temperature in the chamber had plunged. Cold light surrounded Mylasa.

‘That is not going to be possible,’ said Severita.

‘I must insist,’ said Iaso.

Ninkurra flinched. The distant telepathic link to the hawk she had left with Duke von Castellan had just been severed. She blinked. Ghost images of the bird’s last moments bubbled through her eyes. She took two quick breaths and unharnessed a krak charge from her waist. Iaso was still talking into the vox-speaker next to the door, but it was clearly pointless. She was out of time.

‘Leave here,’ said Severita. ‘Leave here now, Medicae Primus.’

‘I have my duty,’ said Iaso’s voice. Severita glanced behind her at the ghost-haloed witch and the glowing casket.

‘And I mine,’ said Severita.

The door blew in. The blast flipped Severita back. She hit a cryo-machine and tumbled to the floor. She gasped, unable to breathe.

Stand! screamed a voice in her skull. Stand! Now!

She rose. Blood scattered from her. Her right hand was no more than mangled fingers, her pistol gone. She couldn’t feel it. Shrapnel had punched through her armour and into her right ribs.

Emperor, hear Your servant…

Pain exploded in her as she leaped towards the doorway. Her sword was in her left hand, blade lit.

Emperor, protect Your servant…

A gun roared. Severita twisted aside as the round shattered against the wall. A blur moved just beyond the torn door. She spun forwards, blood and muscle, and pain and prayer spiralling together.

Emperor, bring death to Your betrayers…

A figure came through the door and sliced down at Severita. Its cloak billowed and folded with the darkness. A sword whistled as it cut. Fast, very fast; Severita did not even see the cut, but her sword found it anyway.

Light and sound screamed out as the swords kissed. The enemy was cutting again, but Severita had let go of her blade as the edges met. She could see a face inside a hood, eyes hidden by infra-goggles, mouth set in a line, and in that moment she saw the mouth thin in surprise as Severita’s sword spun through the air. Severita ducked, spun low and kicked the assassin in the gut. The woman staggered back half a step, balanced and lashed forwards. Severita caught her falling sword out of the air. The power field reactivated as her fingers closed on the haft. She cut, the blade spitting lightning.

The cloaked woman flicked her blade up to parry. The edges met, and the woman’s blade exploded into fragments. The woman jerked back, the hilt of her shattered sword still in her hand. Severita thrust, body weight and momentum rippling through her and down to the lightning-wreathed sword tip. And as the thrust unfolded, Severita saw a flash as the cloaked woman brought the haft of her shattered sword up, and slash down. A blade of splinters formed as it slid through the air, whip-crack fast, but slowed in Severita’s eye.

She jumped back, feeling the pain of her wounds flare into sharp, white fire. The edge of the woman’s sword struck the bracer on her left arm, bit deep and sheared away. She stepped back, but the movement was too slow, and the cloaked woman was coming forwards, cutting again and again. She reversed her sword, parrying and deflecting as she backed against the wall. Severita could feel the thread of prayer in her mind fray. Blood was pulsing now from the wound the shrapnel had ripped in her torso armour. Behind her she could feel the frozen, crackling presence of Enna and Mylasa.

‘Emperor, aid Thy servant…’ The words ripped from her mouth. The swords struck again, but this time she arched her back, bending like a willow in the wind. The cloaked woman’s sword slid past above her as she uncoiled. The other woman flinched back. Severita kicked out, and felt the impact jolt up her leg. The woman slammed back through the ruin of the door. Severita followed, sword ready to deliver a final blow.

Something dived out of the dark. Severita had an instant to catch a glimpse of wings and chromed talons, before it struck her. Shrieks filled her ears. Wings beat around her head. She raised her sword and hand, but talons had already found the flesh of her neck. She had a second of feeling numb cold cascade through her, and then she was falling down to darkness, the high shrieks filling her ears as the faltering prayer in her soul vanished into the darkening world.

Ninkurra picked herself up off the floor of the corridor. The psyber-hawk was still perched on top of the bloody form of the guard. A Sister of Battle, almost certainly, and an exceptionally resilient and skilled one at that. Ninkurra was lucky to be alive.

She stepped back towards the door. A flicker of thought pulled the hawk to her shoulder. A groan came from behind her and she turned. Iaso was sprawled on the floor where she had fallen after the krak charge had blown the door in.

‘Be still,’ she said. Iaso flinched but did not disobey. Ninkurra looked through the door. She spent a breath letting her eyes glide over the details. A single candle set on the floor was the only natural light source. A figure, wreathed in ice and ghost-light, hung in the air in the middle of the space. Ninkurra could feel the power of the mind inside the figure’s skull, but it was directed, locked and focused on the heat-cloaked casket bolted upright to the floor. There was someone inside, a smudge of pale face framed through a view slit.

Ninkurra aimed her pistol through the door at the floating psyker. She was not going to take the risk of going any closer with it still alive. She breathed out slowly, her finger squeezing on the trigger.

A bullet slammed into the gun as it fired, and ripped it from her hand. Yanked off target, the round hit the psyker on its shoulder and tore through the bulbous machines ringing its neck. It spun back, tumbling to the ground. The force of the psychic cry made Ninkurra sway. She turned, eyes and mind trying to find the shooter. The hawk launched from her shoulder, wings spreading, beak opening. A bullet tore its head off before it could beat its wings. It tumbled to the deck, thrashing. Ninkurra dived through the door. The fingers of the hand that had held the pistol were burning with pain, but she could still kill in other ways. She rolled and came up next to the casket, blade raised.

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said a voice from by the door.

Ninkurra rammed the tip of the shard-blade down towards the still face beyond the view slit. A bullet hit the descending blade. It shattered. The magnetically-cohered shards rang off the metal of the casket. The second bullet hit her sword hand just after the first hit the blade. The impact pitched her onto the floor. She rolled, stabbing her will out at the shooter’s mind. And struck cold ice.

Three more bullets hit her in the shoulders and knee. She collapsed, the world swimming around her.

A man in a quilted bodyglove advanced from the shadows. His eyes were still, his movements unhurried. His hands hung loosely, a pistol held in each. Ninkurra gasped, tasted blood on her tongue and spat at him. The man raised an eyebrow then squatted down, so that he was only an arm’s reach away. Ninkurra tried to move her arms, tried to find a last thread of strength to match her defiance.

‘I hit the nerve clusters,’ said the gunman. ‘The upside for you is that you should not be feeling much in the way of pain. The downside is you don’t get to murder me with those oh-so-very deadly hands of yours.’

Ninkurra closed her eyes and stabbed her mind at him again. He blinked.

‘Your master should not have sent you alone,’ he said, and his voice had shed the casual softness that it had held before. His blue eyes were suddenly cold and hard. The words folded into Ninkurra’s smudged thoughts. ‘And he should not have interfered. His is the hand on the scythe, not the sower of seed.’

Her master… how did he…?

‘He is a man of faith,’ said the gunman. ‘He should have known that angels watch over the worthy.’

‘Who…’ began Ninkurra. But the man had holstered one of his pistols and held up a single bright silver coin in front of her.

‘The path to resurrection and revelation is not simple.’ He nodded at the casket. ‘She matters more than you, more than me.’ He opened his mouth and placed the silver coin under his tongue. ‘And so she must live, and you must pass through the gates of night.’

He stood. The muzzle of his pistol was a black circle in Ninkurra’s eye.

She opened her mouth to spit again.

‘And not be reborn in light,’ he said, and pulled the trigger.

Cleander stumbled and fell as he came around the corner. Viola caught him, flicked a glance at one of the household troopers, and he felt another strong arm loop under his shoulders and steady him.

‘You are a fool, or have you just decided that you finally want to die?’ hissed Viola.

‘Is that concern?’ he gasped, as they kept moving. Troopers were moving ahead of them. The ship-wide alarm had finally started to sound. ‘I always thought we both agreed you were overdue to inherit.’

‘If you were not already one step over the threshold I would push you over the door of death myself,’ snapped Viola. ‘Especially if you keep talking.’

He began to laugh, and fire burned across his back.

‘Mistress Viola!’ one of the troopers up ahead shouted.

Cleander could see the wreckage of the hatch door leading to the room where they had kept Enna Gyrid. More troopers ran forwards, guns raised, but Cleander was looking at the figures slumped on the corridor floor.

‘Are they?’

A household trooper with a medicae flash on his shoulder was kneeling next to Iaso, another by the bloody tangle of Severita.

‘The medicae and the Sister are both alive,’ said the trooper.

Viola pulled herself out from under Cleander’s arm, and he slumped into the trooper supporting him. Bal stepped through the wreck of the door, his pistols holstered. Behind him a bloody corpse lay on the floor next to Enna’s cryo-casket. Blood had stained the melting ice and slush on the floor pink.

‘You got here in time,’ said Viola.

The lifeward gave a grim smile.

‘Only just,’ he said, and nodded to the bloody corpse on the floor. ‘Whoever the assassin was, she nearly made it.’ Cleander saw him glance at the thawing cryo-casket and the face of Enna Gyrid beyond the crystal view slit. ‘Whoever sent her wanted this sleeping-dreamer dead very badly.’ He paused. ‘Who is she? You said she was called Enna Gyrid, but who is she?’

‘Mistress Viola! Captain von Castellan!’ An armsman with a boosted vox-set came through the door. Viola turned, but the man was already speaking. ‘Signal through from the bridge. The storms and etheric interference have broken…’

‘What?’ asked Cleander. ‘How?’

The man paused, took a breath, and something in the way he straightened sent ice down Cleander’s spine.

‘Something has happened on the surface.’

Silence filled the long moment that followed. It was Viola who spoke first.

‘Tell us,’ she said.

Eighteen

Koleg felt his mind turn over as the Neverborn howled towards him. His skin shivered over his muscles. Inside his skull a smothering, silent scream echoed on and on. The cut threads of his memories and emotions writhed. Ghosts of hate and fear rose and shouted at him to run, to charge, to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger and let it all be done.

He levelled his pistol and fired. Rounds roared from the macrostubber. Muzzle flare reached three metres out and brushed the faces of the charging daemons. He panned the gun across the mass of limbs and maws, cutting through dust-like flesh. The barrel glowed red a second before the ammo cylinder ran dry. He snapped it free. A daemon shaped like a ball of tentacles and teeth bounded forwards. Koleg snapped a fresh cylinder in place as the thing reached for him. He was not going to be fast enough – he knew that with a cold certainty even as he looked up into the mouth yawning wide above him, its throat a well of shadow.

A wall of white fire slammed into the daemon and blasted it back into a cloud of dust and screaming shadow. Covenant came forward into the gap. A cold light haloed his head, and his sword was lit as he drove it into the mass of Neverborn. Lightning and steel met flesh. The light around his head blazed bright, and a wave of force ripped outwards from him. Koleg felt himself launch back. The power ploughed into the Neverborn, pulping bodies back to powder. Covenant let out a cry of effort and the psychic force changed shape, narrowing into an arc that sliced on like a sickle through grass. The air was thick with the smell of frost and iron.

Covenant strode in the wake of the psychic wave. Dissolving hands and talons reached for him from the floor. The bald man’s face was serene, his eyes clear, though there was blood running down his chin from his lips.

‘You are one of the three,’ said Covenant. ‘The Wanderer.’ His shoulder cannon twitched, but spun to fire at the daemons still crawling from the air. He held his sword before him in both hands. The cold lightning of the power blade pushed hard shadows into the recesses of his face.

‘You let this holy place burn just for this moment, did you not?’ said the Wanderer. The cannon on Covenant’s shoulder twitched around and fired. Light exploded around the man. When the flash faded the man was still standing there, just as he had been before. Covenant advanced. The roar of torn reality and gunfire seemed to form a tunnel before his steps. ‘In the reckoning, what will weigh in the balance against your atrocities, Covenant?’

‘You are a false servant of the Throne,’ said Covenant.

The Wanderer gave a single shake of his head, and the gesture raised the memory of a priest that had talked to Koleg as a child, and explained that salvation did not mean kindness.

‘I am shriven,’ said the Wanderer. ‘I am damned, but I take that burden for mankind. Even for you, Covenant. Sins should only be carried by those that can bear them.’ Covenant was five paces away, sword rising, eyes fixed. ‘Salvation for mankind, that is all that matters. Everything else is just a dream that has lost its way.’

An invisible hand slammed the man back off his feet. The Wanderer’s conversion field flared bright and brighter, strobing through colours as it overloaded, and Covenant was charging now, sword rising. The daemons of dust howled and turned towards Covenant. Koleg fired, sawing gunfire through the grey talons and maws reaching for his master. The Wanderer’s halo of light vanished, and the edge of Covenant’s sword descended like a comet dragged from the night sky.

A shape blurred across Koleg’s sight. He had enough time to catch the impression of glowing wounds crossing bare muscle and a curved edge that dragged the light from the air in a smear behind it. Covenant’s sword slammed into something, and the gloom exploded into shreds of shadow and howling light.

Bishop Xilita locked the iron door behind her, and pulled the key out of the lock. The air of the governance chamber vibrated with the sound of pistons, and the clank of turning wheels. The venting plumes of flammable gas from the governor machines pulsed orange light through the chamber. Huge whirling stacks of black metal projected through a web of gantries that led from the door.

She paused for a second, looking at her shadow as it fell on the door she had just passed through. It was small, and led to a spiral stair that led up to her sanctuary. It was the only way of reaching this chamber and the iron door the only way in or out. She turned the key to the door over in her hands.

A servitor clanked towards her. Dust and wear covered its machine components.

It stopped, and a speaker set in its chest buzzed as it prepared to speak.

‘I bear the seal and blood of my office,’ said Xilita, holding out an open hand. ‘Obey my command.’

The servitor looked at her. Light pulsed in the cracked glass of its eye, then it reached out and scratched a needle-tipped finger across her outstretched palm. Something clattered in its cranium, and then it bowed.

‘What is your will?’

She looked at it for a long moment, feeling the words hovering just behind her lips. She thought of all the things she had done, and all the secrets she had kept, each of them weighing over the years more heavily than the chains that bent her back and dragged on her limbs. Through the grating beneath her feet, she could see the long drop down a pipe-lined shaft to a distant, molten glow.

‘Was I right?’ she asked.

The servitor tilted its head.

‘I do not comprehend your command.’

She smiled and shook her head.

‘What is the point of all of this… suffering, if it is not for something, you know, for something greater? It has to be, doesn’t it?’ The servitor buzzed and clanked with confusion. Xilita shook her head, then held up the key that would unlock the door out of the chamber, and dropped it over the edge of the gantry, down into the molten glow below. ‘My command is to shut down the governance machinery. All of it.’

‘Compliance,’ said the servitor.

Glavius-4-Rho twisted as a hound-like thing made of darkness and dust lunged at him. He skittered back, and one of the mechadendrites on his back arched over his head. The beam of its neutron-laser struck the creature, and bored through it. Its strength might be powered by energies beyond rational analysis, but the dust of its body fused and melted in an eyeblink. He swept the beam through the next monstrosity, feeling his power reserves drain. His machine limbs shivered. Warnings buzzed through his awareness. Paradoxes were swarming through his data systems. Parts of his system and consciousness were filling up with shrieks of corrupted data as reality bent and broke in the presence of the daemons. He tried to step back as a cloud of things with wings and bladed mouths formed from the dust and air. The gears of his legs locked. Error data flooded him.

‘All is pure in the machine,’ he muttered, and dumped purge routines through his machine components. For a second he blanked out, and came back to awareness only just in time to lash an electro-wreathed hand through one of the flock of winged daemons that had dived at him. Sparks arched up his arm. Inside his remaining flesh he felt pain.

The cathedral boiled with the sounds of conflict. Beyond the breach in the main doors they had entered through, his long-range sensors could detect body heat and vibration. There were people coming. Humans. Or things that might be humans.

Across the tenuous connection he still maintained with the monastery’s limited machine spirits, he felt something shift and then begin to blare a warning.

‘Judge Orsino,’ he spoke across the short-range vox. Behind him, the human called Claudia had shrunk back beside a pillar. Epicles had his back against the cold stone, his mouth moving, blood-stained sweat running down his face. The warning rose in pitch across the link to the monastery’s systems. ‘Judge Orsino!’ repeated Glavius-4-Rho, shouting the words with all the power he could spare.

Beside the next pillar in the avenue, Orsino flicked a glance at Glavius-4-Rho as she fired a bolt into a billowing mass of feathers and forming faces. A ring of arbitrators remained around her, still firing. Covenant and Koleg had vanished behind a blur of dust through which flashes of light threw shadows.

‘What?’ she shouted.

‘I believe that there are a high volume of hostiles within a short distance of our location, and closing.’

‘Noted,’ she replied. The judge paused to reload her pistol. Her braced limbs moved with clockwork slowness.

‘And…’ he began. A figure came through the breach in the great door. It stood for a second, its red rags bloody and soot-stained. It raised its head, and howled through the mask nailed to its face. Then it ran forwards. More came through the breach. Dust daemons spiralled through the air towards them and ripped into them, coiling into their flesh, feeding on the blood as it fell.

‘And,’ Glavius-4-Rho forced himself to speak. ‘I am receiving a warning across the machine-link I have with the monastery’s systems. The geothermal regulators beneath the complex are being shut down. Once that process is complete a catastrophic volcanic event is inevitable and imminent.’

‘Can you stop the process?’ she called. Two of the arbitrators had now switched fire back towards the figures swarming through the breach in the cathedral doors.

‘No,’ said Glavius-4-Rho. ‘The progression of events is now inevitable.’

Covenant reeled back, barely catching his balance as the shock of contact shuddered through his sword.

I will die here, he thought.

The sickle blade that had caught his blow blurred towards him, moaning, dragging molten light with it. Its curve was half a metre wide, its edge a notched razor. In his psychic senses it shrieked hunger and pain, babbling as the sigils stamped into its metal burned.

Here is where I fail for the last time.

The figure wielding the blade was tall, stripped to the waist and hugely muscled. Scars and brands criss-crossed his skin, blending divinity and blasphemy. Blood and fire wept from the marks on his hands and arms. He blurred as he moved, jerking like a drawn image on the margins of the flicked pages of a book. Covenant could feel cold fury and agony and control radiating from the man, rippling through the warp as reality distorted around the blade.

The psycannon on his shoulder spun and fired three times. The sickle blade sliced through space, and the rounds were exploding against the tainted metal, the daemon within it howling in pain. Fresh wounds opened on the scarred man’s arms. Covenant cut, sword slicing straight down. The sickle rose, but it was slower, wounded; for a second just a smile of metal. Covenant drove all his strength into the blow. Lightning flared as the two weapons met again, and the sword bit into the sickle. Blood and molten metal fell from the wounded weapon, but it did not break, and now the scarred man was coming forward, spinning the sickle low under Covenant’s guard, and the swords clashed again.

The Wanderer was watching, his face showing pain but his movements unhurried. Covenant met the eyes, and through them saw a flash of triumph and of pity in that look.

‘You are nothing, understand?’ The voice of memory rose in Covenant, as he parried another blow of the sickle.

‘Yes, prefect,’ said the boy in grey kneeling on the floor.

‘Only the Emperor is real. Only duty matters. And you…’ The whip lashed across the boy’s raised hands. He swallowed the pain but felt tears form at the corners of his eyes. ‘You are too weak to be true, and too flawed to be faithful.’ And the whip lashed down again.

No. The thought rose through him, past the doubt. No. And the word was an echo of unspoken rage. The rage caught his thoughts and echoed out through the warp. Force ripped from him. The scarred man faltered, scars, tattoos and brands kindling with cold light. Bullets blurred in from behind Covenant.

‘Get back, my lord!’ Koleg’s dry shout rose above the din.

The scarred man’s flesh burst as rounds tore through muscle. He fell, the blade twisting in his hand. Covenant’s psycannon roared instinctively and he was going forwards, his muscles pulling the edge of his sword down onto the fallen figure’s neck. The scarred man gasped a silent scream, and twisted away, blink-fast. Ashen blood drew back into bullet wounds, scars split and spread. Covenant tried to turn, to pull the killing blow around to meet the sickle, but it was already sliding past his guard, and he could feel the hunger at its core hissing in anticipation. The psycannon on his shoulder clattered on an empty chamber as his mind willed it to fire.

‘What do they call you here?’ Argento had asked in the cell in the schola.

‘Zero-one-three-seven-delta,’ he had answered, looking up into the inquisitor’s eyes.

‘A name for the past, not the future. You shall be called Covenant.’

He rammed his will out at the scarred man, but felt the power drain into the sickle. Time was a slow creep from instant to instant. Sound had vanished from his ears.

‘What is the only thing that is worse than betrayal?’

‘Failure,’ he had answered. His master had smiled.

‘Quite right too, boy.’

But I have failed, he thought, and saw his own pale face in the scarred man’s eyes as the sickle slid through the last breath of air.

The scarred man vanished. Flesh and bone blasted to ash. The sickle dropped to the floor, twisting as it fell and then folding and crumpling, the metal glowing with heat as the daemon bound within screamed. Covenant stumbled, cinders stinging his eyes, as above and around him the conjured daemons howled like jackals.

Memnon turned, panic on his once-calm face.

A figure walked from a shadowed door. The robes were burning from him, but the features of Abbot Iacto could still be seen on its mask of cracked skin.

Flames haloed it. Black smoke cloaked it, and its eyes were suns. The floor cracked under its feet. Slabs of stone peeled up into the air. The pillars of the cathedral groaned and shifted.

A daemon the size of a tank and shaped like a skinned dog leaped forward with a hooting cry. The burning figure turned its head and the daemon came apart. False muscle and bone unwound into nothing, and the thing’s shriek drained into silence. The sounds of battle faded with the figure’s slow measured steps as it came on. Covenant was still, staring at the advancing figure.

Inside his head, Memnon could feel thoughts and emotions draining away, burning from his soul and pulling into the golden vortex of the advancing figure.

‘You have to kill it!’ he shouted. Covenant looked around. Memnon shook his head. ‘You do not understand. It is not time, this is not–’ And the burning figure looked at him then, and the burning eyes met his. His eyes burst and boiled. He felt his heart stop. Blood went still in his veins. Muscles froze. He was lifting from the ground, feeling the substance of his being pull apart as something vast reached into his mind, and he felt his thoughts pull apart as countless voices screamed in his skull. The last breath in his lungs hissed from his throat, catching the last word that he would speak in this world.

‘…Emperor,’ he said.

Covenant saw the Wanderer dissolve into smoke. The haloed figure was still walking forwards. He could hear shouts and the sounds of battle, close but far away. His sword was heavy in his hand. The Wanderer’s last words rolled through him. He saw golden and silver faces hanging on a wall, saw the tools spin as they sculpted the mask of an enemy or of a martyr. He thought of Argento, of him sighing and putting his hand on his shoulder.

‘You choose. That is what we do. We choose between madness and insanity, between darkness and deeper night. We choose when the only thing worse than what we must do is making no choice at all.’

The burning figure stopped. Covenant could feel the heat through his armour. He did not look at it. He did not move.

+I…+ came a voice in his head, like the blast of a furnace. +I cannot see…+

He looked up. The burning figure swayed. The light in its eyes guttered. Covenant took a step forwards. Stone and ash began to drop to the floor, exploding into dust. Someone was at his shoulder, pulling him back, and he could hear voices he recognised. He reached the figure as it struck the floor.

Charred skin spilt. He dropped to his knees beside it. A blackened hand rose and grasped air.

‘Please…’ said a human voice. Ember fires flared in the pits of Abbot Iacto’s eyes. ‘Did it matter?’ The charred body convulsed, cracks spreading across the floor beneath it.

‘Covenant!’ called Orsino’s voice, from just next to him. Another hand on his shoulder, pulling him. He shrugged free and stood.

+I… cannot…+ rasped a voice that was many voices all fading into the distance. +I must…+

He could hear shouting. Gunfire, close by. His sword was in his hands. The edge lit with lightning.

‘Forgive me,’ Covenant said.

Xilita felt the heat rise up the shaft to meet her. She knelt on the grating. Around her the governor machines had started to vibrate. Pipes blew out in clouds of steam. Alarm bells clanged. Pain was growing in her skin where it touched the metal gantry floor.

‘For my sins, forgive me,’ she said, and gasped for breath. The reek of sulphur rose. Beneath her, the distant glow of magma raced up towards her like the exhalation of a tortured god.

‘No…’ gasped Josef. ‘No… not yet.’ He bit down on his own tongue, felt pain and tasted blood.

He pushed up, feeling the pain rise to swallow him, and forcing it down.

‘If…’ he gasped aloud. ‘If ever I served You truly… grant me this time.’

He felt Agata’s hands steady him. He was weeping, he knew, tears freezing on his cheeks amongst the snowflakes. He rose, swaying, feeling the ground pull him back into its embrace, and knowing that if he yielded he would never rise again.

The monastery loomed above him, lit by growing fires blurred by snow and smoke.

‘We must–’

He began but never finished the words.

Fire roared up into the dark, punching a fist of burning gas and molten rock towards the heavens. Blocks of stone rose like flecks of dust. Snow flashed to steam as it fell. Six seconds later the shockwave swept down and blew Josef back off his feet as he stared, open-mouthed, at the inferno.

Epilogue

The Sorceress stood in the freezing twilight beside the black mirror of water. The sun had sunk behind the bones of the dead hives, and bruise-like shadows were strangling the last of the daylight.

Sparks of pain twitched up her spine as she shifted her weight on her bionic legs. Beneath the folds of silk and crinoline she moved on sprung arcs of black carbon and brass. The fibre bundles were still meshing with her nervous system, and moments of both minor and extreme pain were her constant companion. It was one of the smallest prices she had paid in her service to humanity, though perhaps one of the least easy to put aside.

She waited.

The pain passed. She held her thoughts still. The quiet of the dead temple seeped into her. The place had been burned and forgotten long before the world around it had risen in grace and then slumped back into techno-barbarism. Ancient soot darkened its pillars and floors, and the bones of its priests now clung to the corners as dust. It was a place that mattered only if you knew what it had been, and had the will to put its ghosts to use.

The Sorceress bent her head and looked down at the dim reflection in the pool of water at her feet. A black silk hood framed her face. Kohl rimmed her eyes, and painted letters – death marks in the language of the local clans – wound over her cheeks and chin. She closed her eyes, focused her will, and breathed a word into the cold air.

She opened her eyes.

A face was looking up at her from the black water, but it was no longer hers.

‘You have read the auguries?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ said the High Priest, his voice seeming to come like a distant echo in the air.

‘Not what we expected,’ said the Sorceress.

‘The presence of the Pilgrims of Hate was… unusual. Their creed was supposed to be confined to Nex and Dammerron. I thought you kept their seed to those worlds… but I suppose the storm winds rise and fire spreads where it will.’

The Sorceress kept her silence for a lengthening moment.

‘The Wanderer is a bad loss,’ she said at last.

‘Is he?’ asked the High Priest.

‘His skills, commitment and insight–’

‘Can be replaced, or bettered, and besides, he performed his function. The prospect fell short of incarnation. At least in whole.’

‘Only just.’

‘Indeed, but in matters of salvation the margins of success are always narrow.’

‘As you say.’

‘There is still the question of why this occurred again on Dominicus.’

‘You gave an answer to Memnon when he asked. It is a crucible of fate, those were your words. Did you lie?’

A laugh shivered through the temple.

‘No, but after the loss of Revelation, I just thought that it was done. The two went together, child and place. That another prospect should arise there, after all this time… for a while I wondered if somehow she was still there.’ The High Priest lapsed into a silence which the Sorceress did not fill. ‘The next stage is ready?’ he asked at last.

‘Yes.’

‘You have identified a vessel?’

‘Yes.’

A shadow of a smile on the dark water.

‘You were always my best student,’ said the High Priest, ‘but terrible at hiding your emotions.’

‘Don’t patronise me,’ she snarled. The water rippled again.

‘We do what is needed, remember that,’ he said. ‘Not just what is necessary, but what is needed if humanity is going to survive the night that comes. You saw that. That is why you are here.’

‘Covenant…’

‘Yes… An opportunity that is no more. At least it simplifies matters.’

‘Do you not…’ she stopped herself. For an instant her focus had slipped. Ripples had blurred the reflected image. Then she had brought her emotions back under control.

‘Do I not feel sorrow?’ the High Priest asked. ‘Sorrow is a blanket we give to children.’

She was silent for a second.

‘As you say,’ she replied.

The face in the water was still for a moment, the shadow of its eyes staring up at her gaze.

‘We shall speak again soon,’ he said, at last. ‘Farewell, for now.’

The reflection cleared from the black water, and a second later it began to boil and steam. Inquisitor Idris looked up at the last scraps of light fading behind the metal peaks in the distance.

‘Farewell, for now…’ she said to the silence, and then turned and walked away into the twilight. In the pool, the water that had held the face of Inquisitor Argento continued to boil into vapour and air.

About the Author

John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Slaves to Darkness, Praetorian of Dorn and Tallarn, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. Additionally, for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written The Horusian Wars: Resurrection, the audio dramas Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies, Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams, the Ahriman series and many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

Another one for my friend, Alan, the late Lord of House Bligh –
‘Look, chap, ten years later and here are the pilgrims again.
Some of them don’t even have eyes…’

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by K. D. Stanton.

The Horusian Wars: Incarnation © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. The Horusian Wars: Incarnation, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78030-988-0

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.